Zen Trek
by Spamela
Summary: Zendall has become lost in different timelines, each unaware of the other’s existence. In a world without Zach, Kendall has married Ryan. In a world without Kendall, Zach and Dixie are lovers. Somehow Zach and Kendall begin to find each other in dreams
1. Chapter 1

_Zendall has become lost in different timelines, each unaware of the other's existence. In a world without Zach, Kendall has married Ryan. In a world without Kendall, Zach has taken up with Dixie. But something seems wrong to them both. They sense that the best part of themselves is missing and so slowly they begin to search without knowing what they are searching for. Can Zach and Kendall successfully defy the laws of space, time and Soaps? They told each other more than once that they would always find their way back to one another. Can they?_

Chapter One – "_Kendall Hart Lavery"_

_She was dreaming again. Lately she was sure the best part of her life was spent in dreams. He was there with her. He was always there with her. Speaking words that felt like kisses in between kisses that set her frozen soul on fire and brought all of her back to life. Why was she only alive when she was asleep? Who was he? How could she be completely in love with somebody she had never met?_

"Kendall, wake up! You're having a nightmare!"

Kendall's eyes flew open. "It wasn't a night mare," she told Ryan, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt. "Whatever it was, it wasn't a nightmare."

Ryan propped himself up in bed on one arm and quietly studied his wife of almost two years, as she lay beside him, awash in the moonlight pouring through their window, framing her perfect body in its glow. "I married a goddess," Ryan realized, not for the first time. The Ancients went to war over a face like that, he reflected. No woman had ever meant more to him. They were destined to be together. And yet. The truth was that she seemed less and less to him the Kendall he had known and loved for years, although he couldn't begin to understand why. "You sounded like you were having a nightmare. You were moaning in your sleep."

She nodded. "I bet I was." There was that long-suffering tone in his voice she hated the most. The Sighin' Ryan Tone. "Sorry my moans woke you up."

He moved closer, the smell of her intoxicating him as ever it did. "In the mood for some more moaning?" She was so damn beautiful, so exciting, so alluring.

"Not tonight, Ryan," she said, turning away from him.

So distant. So remote. So incredibly sad.

"What the matter, Kendall?" he had asked her more than once. More than a hundred times.

"Matter? Nothing. What could be the matter? I have everything I've ever dreamed of."

He knew that wasn't true. But why wasn't it true? They were the Golden Couple. Everybody thought so. Even Erica . Especially Erica. "My mother-in-law is crazier about me than my wife is," he realized soberly. But it was good to have her on his side. Especially in the ongoing war between Jackson Montgomery and his brother, Jonathan. Jack refused to accept Jonathan as his son-in-law, even after Lily had given birth to a beautiful baby boy. Ryan couldn't fathom that. If Spike couldn't bring Jack around, what could? Erica's unflagging support of Jonathan nearly tore her marriage to Jack apart. But it didn't. Through it all, come what may, Erica and Jack still loved one another.

"Do we, Kendall?" he asked her in a whisper he hoped she wouldn't hear because he was terrified of what she might answer.

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"Have you decided what Ryan is getting you for your anniversary?" Erica asked her daughter the very next day. She had appeared unannounced at Fusion and dragged Kendall off to a lunch she was hardly in the mood for.

"I think you should take off on a romantic second honeymoon to Paris," Erica gushed when their salads arrived. "Paris in the Spring! Ohhh-la-la!"

"That's an idea," Kendall acknowledged listlessly.

"What's the matter, Kendall?" Something was wrong with her daughter. Erica had known that for months. But what could it be?

"Matter? Nothing? I have everything I've ever dreamed of."

Erica couldn't agree more. "You do! I know that! Everybody knows that! Ryan is perfect for you!"

Not knowing quite how to respond to that, Kendall stared in silence at her Mother's yet to be eaten salad.

"Never to be eaten salad," she thought idly. She blinked. Why was that?

"Mother, why aren't you eating?" she heard herself asking.

Erica smiled in utter bewilderment. "Eating?"

Kendall pointed to the untouched entree. "You haven't touched your lunch, and you're not going to touch it. You never eat when we're at a restaurant! Well, maybe you nibble, but that's about it! Why is that?"

Erica laughed and shrugged. "Oh, I don't know! I never noticed! But you're not eating either, Kendall!"

Kendall looked down at her pristine spinach salad. Not a crouton out of place. "Oh, you're right! Why is that?"

Erica's expression turned to one of concern. "Kendall, are you feeling all right? You don't seem right somehow."

Kendall put aside all thoughts of their salads. "I know I don't, Mother," she admitted haltingly. "I haven't been sleeping well lately." Actually, sleeping was about the only thing she WAS doing well lately. She wished she were asleep now, dreaming about him. Him? Who?

"I'm pretty sure I'm going crazy," she confided to Erica. "More than pretty sure."

Erica sighed. "I've gone crazy," she commiserated. "It's no fun. Remember when I ran away to become a Showgirl in Vegas? Talk about crazy!"

Kendall had begun to listen with intense care. "I remember that, Mother." Her heart had begun to beat faster. "You met a casino owner you didn't much like. He sent you to the hospital because of your drinking." There was a drumming in her ears now. "What was his name again?"

"Zach Slater," Erica spat out. "Horrid man! Thank goodness he didn't follow me back to Pine Valley!"

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_No Zach Slater in Pine Valley? OMG! Stay strong, Zendallites, our Adventure is only beginning!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two – "Zaxie"_

_Previously -- Kendall Hart Lavery is completely miserable, although she has "everything she ever dreamed of". Ryan, her husband, senses this but is at a loss to explain it. He has no idea that his wife is only happy when she's dreaming about a man she has never even met. Or has she? At lunch one day, she tells Erica she thinks she's going crazy, which reminds Erica of the last time Erica went crazy. When she was a Showgirl in Las Vegas. This in turn reminds Kendall of the casino owner Erica had hated at first sight. Erica remembers him all too well. His name was --_

"Zach Slater."

Zach scowled at the sound of his name. He had been studying the monitors that showed him everything that was happening on the floor of his Casino. Who was winning too consistently? How? Luck? Card counting? Which slot machines were paying out too much, too soon? Which innocent-looking bumpkin was throwing loaded dice?

"Zach! Don't you hear me?"

It was Dixie again. He sighed and clicked off the monitors.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, turning to her. "I was concentrating on my garden."

She laughed. "Oh, is that what you call that den of inequity?"

"Sometimes."

"And how does your garden grow, Mr. Slater?" she inquired.

"Wonderously well, Ms. Cooney," he reported, deliberately choosing to use her maiden name, which he knew she preferred these days. "But it needs constant pruning. Card sharks grow like weeds. If I'm not careful, they'll run wild."

She laughed again.

"If you're not careful, _I'll_ run wild!"

He liked her. He had liked her from the first. She was his kind of woman. Up front and no nonsense. A man knew where he stood with Dixie. They were alike, he knew. Outsiders forever battling the world, or at least battling all of Pine Valley. They were and would always be the chief suspects in the Greg Madden Murder Mystery. How long ago had it been since that earthquake coughed up Madden's dead body? Somebody had buried him alive. _Alive_. Not that Madden had deserved any better, but still. How long ago was that now? Years. The crime had never been solved, and Dixie and Zach had never been cleared, although a jury of their peers hadn't found them guilty. Unhappily, "Not Guilty' did not mean "Innocent" in Pine Valley. But then again, he thought, who was innocent in Pine Valley?

"Today's my Kate's birthday," Dixie told him quietly, as if he didn't know that.

They had never found Dixie and Tad's daughter, who had been taken from a horribly injured Dixie (although with her consent) by the deranged Dr. Gregory Madden, shortly after the baby's birth and given by Madden to Who-Knew-Who, Who-Knew-Where. Madden's grisly death had erased all real hope of ever finding her. Leads still cropped up from time to time, but they never panned out. Amazingly, despite the unholy roller coaster she was on, Dixie never gave up.

"How old is she now?" Zach asked because he sensed Dixie needed to talk about Kate more than she needed anything else from him right then.

"Thirty-five," she replied.

Zach nodded, marveling that Dixie herself looked no older than thirty-five.

"What?" she asked him. "There's lipstick on my teeth?"

He realized he had been staring. "It's only that you don't look like you could have a thirty-five year old daughter."

Dixie sighed. "The wonders of Reverse SORASING!

"Reverse Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome?" Zach checked, just to make sure. "I thought that was reserved for La Kane."

She laughed again. "Don't let Erica hear you say that! She hates you enough as it is!"

"She doesn't hate me," Zach differed. "She's got the hots for me."

"But it's completely unrequited lust, which has driven her into bitterness and rage," Dixie deadpanned.

"Something like that," Zach said, a definite glint in his eyes.

"Anyway," she laughed, "you're looking pretty good yourself for a man of my age!"

He was glad he could make Dixie laugh. He wished he could do more for her. He wished he could find her Kate. He wished he could find the real killer and clear their names. He wished he could fall in love with her.

"Let's go out tonight," she proposed, embracing him. "I don't want to be alone. Even with you. Let's go somewhere noisy and bright. Take me dancing, Zach?"

He kissed her, wishing as always that kissing her could mean more to him than it did.

"Me, dance?" he joked. "Why would you want your pretty little toes crushed?"

She hugged him. "You won't step on them. My toes have complete confidence in you, Mr. Slater!"

"Your toes are living in a fool's paradise," he told her.

"So am I," she thought. She knew he was her best friend. Her only friend. He had been there for her from the beginning, when they met by chance in that cemetery and traded sad stories of loss and grief. All through the Madden Madness, the accusations, the trial, Zach never wavered. He was her rock. and she loved him as much as she trusted him. The love and trust had begun for her even before they had ever slept with each other. Afterwards, of course, she began falling faster and harder. And Zach? Well, the chemistry was there from the start, and hadn't diminished any through the years. Dixie knew that. But she knew something else as well. Zach Slater was emotionally unavailable. At least to her.

"Okay, dancing it is," he was telling her now. "But let's make it an early night, okay?"

"Need to catch up on your beauty sleep?" she kidded him.

"I'm not beautiful enough for you as is?" he kidded her.

"You'll do," she said, not kidding anybody. "You're the man whose got everything."

He grinned ruefully. "Too true. I have everything I've ever dreamed of."

"Zach, are you okay?" she asked, suddenly worried. He seemed even more distant than usual.

He didn't want to worry her. That's the last thing he wanted. "I'm fine, Ms. Cooney. "I just need some sleep."

What he really needed, he thought, was to get back into that dream.

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_Dream? OMG is Zach dreaming too? Hmmm. Could that mean that ---? Well, you're just gonna have to come back here next week to find out! Meanwhile I'd love to hear from you! _


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three – "Whose Dream Is It Anyway?"_

_Previously: In a world without Kendall, Zach Slater has turned to Dixie Cooney for everything but love. Together they have successfully faced the Madden Murder trial and the ongoing accusations of an unforgiving Pine Valley. They are still looking for Kate, who at the moment is a woman of thirty-five. Dixie is Zach's companion. But at night he dreams of Somebody Else._

She was alone in a fog. "Just like when I'm awake," she thought. He was nowhere in sight, which scared her. She wasn't usually the first one there, wherever "there" chanced to be that night. She wasn't used to waiting for him. The few times it had happened, she had the identical reaction. Panic.

"Don't do this to me," she said aloud. "I've been looking forward to being with you all day long." All day long? All _life_ long.

She tried to will him to be there. This was her dream, wasn't it? She had read somewhere that anything the dreamer wishes were in their dream enters the dream sooner or later.

"Sooner would be better than later," she called out to the nothingness around her. "Before the damn clock radio goes off!"

How long had they been meeting like this? Weeks? Forever? She wasn't sure. Every morning she would forget everything about the dream except the way he had made her feel. But the following dream she would remember most of the one before, so that there was a kind of hazy continuity in their relationship.

"Relationship," she mused aloud. "I am having a relationship with a phantom."

She closed her eyes and tried sinking deeper into the dream. When she opened them, he would be there. He wasn't. She tried that a few more times before she gave up, afraid she would wake all the way up and find herself in bed next to Ryan.

"It isn't nice to stand up a person in their own damn dream!" she cried out in utter and complete frustration.

She felt him next to her before she saw him.

"You know I'd never stand you up, Lovely," he whispered huskily. "I'm not that kind of phantom."

He was standing in front of her in the fog. The wonderful, beautiful, blessed fog.

'You're late," she said hoarsely.

"Too late?" he asked.

She flew into his arms.

"Not too late," she moaned, kissing him, molding her body to his. "Never too late."

He lifted her and carried her up a red-carpeted staircase which led to a four-poster bed that looked right out of "Gone With the Wind". Every night it was a different bed. Sometimes it wasn't a bed. They had made love in fields of flowers and on top of the Eiffel Tower, which was slightly uncomfortable but still thrilling. Once on a space ship. Lots of times in a submarine. But tonight it was Tara, and the two of them were suddenly dressed for the occasion. He in a white linen Pirate's shirt, skin-tight black pants and a wide red belt, she in a satin and lace black nightgown that left nothing to his imagination. Both outfits came off with astounding speed.

Later they talked. When their passion was spent, they always talked. She wouldn't remember what they had talked about when she woke up. The passion she'd remember.

"Why were you so late?" she asked him. "I don't like waiting."

She was sitting up in Scarlet O'Hara's bed, cradling his head in her lap, gently wrapping locks of his hair around her fingers.

"Sorry, Lovely, I had to take a friend dancing," he explained, looking up at everything he wanted in the universe. "She's going through a rough patch."

"WHAT?" she yelled, pulling his hair. "You kept me waiting so you could take out some floozy?"

"Hey!" he howled in protest. "I'm not responsible for what I do when I'm awake!"

That stopped her.

"What did you just say?" she laughed, letting go of his hair.

"I have no idea," he admitted.

"I'm so far gone," she said. "Look at me! Insanely jealous because my dream had a date!"

He grinned. "I'm not your dream, Lovely. You're _my_ dream."

She sighed. "How can I be your dream when you don't really exist except in my stupid head?"

"I exist," he made clear to her. "I only wish _you_ existed."

She jumped out of bed and put her nightgown back on. "You exist? I think therefore you are?" She shook her head. "Please, don't go metaphysical on me. I'm confused enough as it is. You know, I let my Mother know today that I'm going crazy. So it's official."

That seemed to interest him. "That must have made Erica's day."

She nodded. She had talked before to him about her Mother, the ever-fabulous Erica Kane.

"You know, in my waking life Erica Kane lives in my town," he told her. "But of course that's why I'm dreaming about her. Or more correctly, about the daughter she doesn't have."

"I'm the one who's dreaming," she corrected him. "Mother remembered how she went nuts a couple of years ago and became a Showgirl in Vegas. The shortest Showgirl on the Strip. She met a casino owner there that she hated on sight. I must have met him when Ryan and I went after her. You'd think I'd remember. Zach Slater. That was his name."

"I know," he knew. "I was there. Only Ryan came with Bianca, not you. There is no you."

"You were there?" she asked him. "How were you there? Who are you?"

Kendall woke up.

"Dammit," she thought, calculating how long it would take her to get back to sleep, to get back to _him_. She looked at the stupid clock radio, then at Ryan, who was snoring peacefully beside her, and felt the requisite amount of guilt. She wondered what Ryan's dreams were like, and no part of her doubted that he only dreamed about her. "It's okay," she told herself for the zillionth time. "My Dream Lover isn't real. I'm not being unfaithful. Exactly." Not knowing why, she turned her head toward the window.

There was somebody standing outside, looking in.

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_What a thing to wake up to! Who's outside the Lavery's window in the middle of the night? Could Zach and Kendall be sharing the same dream? Please return next week when we're pretty sure to find out some of the answers and, of course, more questions! Please review! (See? I'm not above begging! LOL!)_


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Fout – "The Other Side of the Looking Glass"_

_Previously: Zendall meet, banter and make love in dreams. But whose dreams? Zach and Kendall have differing viewpoints on that. They also have differing viewpoints on who went to Las Vegas to bring back Erica Kane. Kendall remembers it was she and Ryan. But Zach remembers it was Ryan and Bianca. He tells Kendall he was there._

"You were there?" she asked him. "How were you there? Who are you?"

At which point she disappeared.

Zach pounded the nearest pillow he could find. When that didn't help, he began to concentrate on getting her to reappear. When that didn't help, he got out of the four-poster and paced the room. When that didn't help, he tried to wake up. He couldn't.

"Damn!" he damned. "I don't want to be here without her!" Upon quick reflection, he realized he didn't want to be _anywhere_ without her. He bounded out of the bedroom and down the red carpeted staircase, expecting to wake up any second. He didn't.

At the bottom of the staircase, he saw the door Rhett had once walked through when he didn't give a damn. Zach gave more than a damn, but walked through it anyway. And found himself in Pine Valley, in front of the condo in which his brother Michael had died. There was another condo directly across from it. Where did that come from? Slowly, as if in a dream ("I _am _in a dream," he thought irritably), he walked over to it and found himself looking in a large window. A bedroom window.

She was in there! On a bed, next to – who was that? – Ryan Lavery? When had she ever mentioned Ryan Lavery? Oh, tonight. When she talked about following Erica to Vegas. But that had been Bianca, Zach remembered. Only tonight she said it had been _her_, not Bianca.

Zach clenched his fists. "What am I thinking about? What does it matter what a girl says in my dream? None of this is real. SHE isn't real!"

But looking at her through the window, as she lay next to a sleeping Ryan Lavery, she looked real enough to Zach. "I can't be jealous of my Dream Girl sleeping with another man," he told himself, remembering she had said something like that earlier. "Why is this happening? Why the hell am I dreaming about Ryan Lavery?"

Zach was nothing if not confused. Why had his dream gone so haywire? Why was he in a Pine Valley he knew, yet didn't know. In his Pine Valley (the _real_ Pine Valley, he told himself) there was only the one condo, the place Michael had died. In his Pine Valley, Ryan Lavery was happily married to Greenlee Lavery, not in bed with some glorious woman who never existed.

"In my Pine Valley, I only have one friend, my co-defendant in an infamous murder trial," he continued to himself. "In my Pine Valley, I walk around like a dead man."

There was no _her_ in his Pine Valley. Never had been. Erica Kane had one daughter, Bianca, who had married Leo du Pres and moved to Paris, where they lived with Miranda, their daughter. Erica also had a son, Josh, whom she had from an early marriage with Tad's brother, Jeff. Josh was a doctor like his father and lived in San Francisco with his companion, Jamie. He visited Erica only rarely. "Smart kid," Zach had always thought. Erica and Zach had never gotten on. Why? Too much alike? Nothing alike? Whatever it was, they annoyed the hell out of each other. "She'd make some mother-in-law," Zach mused. "Lucky for me you're only a dream, Lovely!"

His distracted mind drifted back to the first time he had dreamed about her. He had been in the middle of his usual "Casablanca" dream - he figured running a casino made him identify with Bogart's Rick. Ingrid Bergman was about to make her entrance. Of course, Ilsa wasn't always played by Ingrid Bergman. Sometimes it was Dixie. In those dreams Tad Martin played the Paul Henreid part. But tonight it was neither Dixie nor Ingrid who walked into Rick's Café.

Zach had seen a great many beautiful women in his life. Women who could stop a heart with one glance. The woman who glided into his dream that night could _start_ a heart with one glance. In fact, she did just that. She started Zach's heart.

He hadn't wanted anything or anybody in a long, long time. He joked that he had everything he had ever dreamed of. The man who had everything, in fact, had nothing. But that was okay with him. He had his casino and Dixie. That was enough for him at this stage of his life. But now this. This Vision, who took a seat next to Sam at the piano. Had he ever seen her before in his waking life? No. He would have remembered. How could he not remember?

"Play it, Sam," she was saying in a voice he somehow knew - only how could he know it? "Play 'As Time Goes By'."

Zach was at her side before Sam hit the first note. At first her eyes were guarded. She seemed unsure of herself. How could such a creature be unsure of herself?

"What's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?" she cracked, as Sam began to play.

"I don't think that line is from this movie," he told her.

"That's all right," she told him, "I'm not so nice anyway."

"That's good," he said. "I don't have much use for nice girls. Boring,"

"I'm anything but boring," she let him know in no uncertain terms.

"What are you?" he asked, really wondering.

She shrugged. "Bored. But never boring. I don't know why I should be bored. I have everything I've ever dreamed of. Ask anybody."

She had lost that guarded look. There was something unfathomable in those gorgeous eyes.

"How can you be bored in Casablanca?" he demanded.

"Ah, but I'm really not in Casablanca," she said sadly. "I'm in bed, fast asleep."

"No, that would be me," he laughed. "Tell me, Lovely, do you want us to get out of this picture?"

"Desperately," she decided. "Not that I don't adore black and white movies, this one in particular. It's just that I'd kind of like to see the Man of My Dreams in living color."

"That would be me?" he checked.

"Guess so," she said, linking arms with him, as if she had done that a thousand times before.

Together, they left Rick's Café, Casablanca and black-and-white. He tried to remember where they had gone that night. Was it to the Pyramids? Oz? There had been so many nights, so many dreams.

Until tonight. Until this.

He studied her now through the window. He had never seen her asleep. Sleeping was the last thing on their agenda when they were together. Besides he was already asleep. Wasn't he? She slept like an angel. What was she doing? Moving? Was she awake? Yes. Yes, she was awake. She was looking first at her radio, then at Ryan, then at -

She was looking straight at him. She didn't seem to recognize him at first. She looked startled and frightened. But then.

She got out of bed and went to the window, wearing a nightgown not at all like the one he'd ripped off of her earlier in the dream. This one was pink, ordinary, sexless even. Except that nothing she ever wore could be sexless.

They were facing each other now through the glass. 'She knows me," he thought. He grimaced. Of course she knew him. She was in his dream, how could she not know him?

"I'm wide awake," he heard her say through the closed window. "How can you be here, if I'm not sleeping?"

Zach woke up.

_Are we to believe that Zendall has crossed over barriers of time and space to find one another in shared dreams? How could this happen? And why? Please return next time when our Dreamers begin to search for answers. It's about time! Reviews are treasured!_


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five – "Lily Gives Kendall an Idea and Zaxie Visits Rylee"_

_Previously – Zendall's dream trip to Tara ends with a strange twist. Was that Zach that Kendall saw outside her bedroom window? Was that Kendall that Zach saw inside that bedroom sleeping next to Ryan Lavery? Not knowing what to think, but overwhelmed by all that they feel, Zendall begins to search for answers._

Lily was going on and on about the joys of motherhood while Kendall feigned an interest she couldn't remember ever possessing.

"Spike is the best baby. I know that I can't say he's the best baby because I haven't compared him with all of the other babies in the world, but Jonathan says it's okay to exaggerate when we're talking about Spike because he's special. Jonathan calls him our Miracle Baby because we were never supposed to have sex, except I wanted to because I was really ready. And so was Jonathan. Anyway, Spike has started to sleep through the night. He used to wake Jonathan and me, and we would take turns walking him or changing him or feeding him or singing to him. But now he sleeps right through till morning, so Jonathan and I don't have to do anything in the middle of the night except sleep. Or have sex, of course. Jonathan says Spike is highly intelligent. He can tell by the way his eyes follow us wherever we go."

"Come up for air!" Kendall thought. But she had to admit Spike was an appealing infant, as infants go. She had never been drawn to babies (other than Miranda), but there was something about Spike that grabbed her. "Must be the way his eyes follow me wherever I go," she thought, although she sensed there was another reason she didn't fully understand.

There was a great deal Kendall didn't fully understand these days. There was a great deal she didn't even _partially_ understand. How, for instance, could the Man of Her Dreams make a personal appearance outside her window in the middle of the night? "I was awake," she reminded herself. "How could he have been there?" Actually, he wasn't there when she had climbed out the window to get a better look at him. Actually, that really wasn't why she had climbed out of the window. She saw him perfectly well from where she was standing. There was no mistake. It was definitely him. She climbed out so she could touch him. Hold him. Feel his strong arms engulfing –

"Kendall, is anything the matter?" Lily was asking.

"Plenty," Kendall answered, but not out loud.

"I'm fine, Lily. I was thinking about Spike. You're right. He's a heck of a cute kid."

Lily's face lit up at the compliment. "I think he looks like Jonathan, but Jonathan thinks he looks like me."

Kendall looked down at Baby Lavery, who was cooing in his crib to beat the band. "In my considered opinion, he looks like both of you," she said. Except that wasn't what she was thinking. She was thinking that Spike looked, more than anything, like _her_ baby. Which was all well and good, except that Kendall didn't have a baby, didn't want a baby, never had and never would.

"You look tired," Lily observed, having learned how to evaluate such things from her Life Skills Class. "Jonathan and I both looked tired before Spike learned how to sleep through the night. I don't think we look tired anymore though. Have you been having trouble sleeping, Kendall?"

Kendall shook her head. "I sleep. I even dream." "I even dream when I'm not sleeping," she continued to herself.

How could she dream when she wasn't sleeping? Had _he_ been an hallucination? Obviously. She was seeing things. Why not? People saw things all the time. Especially crazy people.

"I dream about Jonathan a lot," Lily revealed. "In my dreams, he doesn't stutter. He seems different somehow." She brightened. "I like him better when I'm not dreaming him."

Lily was at once Kendall's sister and sister-in-law, due to Erica's marriage to Jack and her own marriage to Ryan. She flat-out adored her. Her innocence and goodness commanded nothing less than utter love and devotion. She wished she could talk to her about _him_, but how could she expect Lily to understand something so baffling?

"I'm dreaming about a man I don't know," she heard herself telling her anyway. "Erica told me I met him a long time ago, but I can't remember that." She bit her lip. "The thing is, Lily, I've fallen in love with him."

Lily was listening intently to Kendall's every word. "But you're in love with Ryan. Can you be in love with two men at the same time?"

"Good question," Kendall thought. "I guess I could be, if one of them was only a dream," she reasoned aloud.

"But one of them _is_ only a dream," Lily pointed out.

"Not so much," Kendall told her. Then she told her about the apparition outside of her window the night before, trying not to make it sound as scary as it sounded.

"That was an hallucination," Lily diagnosed, not sounding scared. "People have them all the time."

"Yeah," Kendall thought. "_Crazy_ people."

"He seemed awfully real," Kendall said, unconvinced of his unreality.

Lily accepted that assessment and moved on. "Okay, that's your hypothesis. To verify your hypothesis, you've got to perform an experiment."

The sounded interesting.

"The next time you dream about him, or see him outside of your window, ask him to tell you something he knows but you don't know. But it needs to be something you can check. If you find out it's true, you'll have verified your hypothesis."

"So I'll know he's real," Kendall realized.

"And if it doesn't check out, you'll know he's not real," Lily finished.

"So I'll know I'm crazy," Kendall realized.

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"And we're visiting Ryan and Greenlee because?" Dixie was inquiring as they got out of Zach's car.

"Swell people, the Laverys," Zach evaded. "We should get to know them better."

Dixie looked at him as if he'd sprouted an additional head. "Since when did you want to get to know _anybody_ in this Town?

"Since I fell madly in love with a woman who doesn't exist," he knew but would never say to Dixie, of all people. He wasn't certain why he had to see Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Lavery and Baby Spike. Obviously, it was because he had seen Ryan with _her_ in his dream that didn't feel exactly like a dream. But what did he hope to accomplish? What could he accomplish? What could he find out? What could Ryan or Greenlee know about the Girl Who Wasn't Really There?

Spike answered the door. He was 3-years old and was taking on all comers.

"Hewo," he greeted them in the friendliest fashion. He had Greenlee's eyes and Ryan's chin, Dixie noticed. Zach only noticed the strange tug in his heart when the toddler greeted them.

"Don't let him run out!" Greenlee screeched, galloping to the door. She scooped up her son in one almost graceful motion.

"I forgot to lock the door," she confessed, as she tried to control Spike who was squirming his way out of her arms.

"Bad idea," Zach judged. "Pine Valley is no place to leave front doors unlocked."

"Greenlee, did you forget to lock the door again?" Ryan demanded, striding in from the den.

"Shut up," she replied. "We have guests. Dixie, Zach, please sit down. Ryan, get them drinks."

Ryan got them drinks while Greenlee installed Spike in his playpen.

'Back in jail again, Spikums!" she crooned to him and then realized what she had said. "Sorry, folks," she apologized to Zaxie, "I didn't mean to use the J word."

"Think nothing of it," Zach smiled.

"We were found Not Guilty," Dixie said for the record.

"Ry and I were so surprised when you called us," Greenlee told them pleasantly.

"We don't mean to impose," Dixie began, still wondering why they were there. "But the four of us haven't really gotten together since Spike was born!" "And rarely before that", she added to herself.

"Always a pleasure to visit with Pine Valley's Destiny Couple," Ryan said cordially, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Why has Zach Slater come to call?" he asked himself. Zach and Ryan, although never enemies, had never managed to become friends. How could they? Zach's father had willed Ryan his multi-national corporation, never suspecting that his eldest son, Alexander, was still alive. When still-alive Alexander surfaced in the form of Zach Slater, Las Vegas Casino Owner, Ryan had a hard time believing Zach wanted no part of Cambias Industries. Even now, so many years later, he wondered if Zach had a secret motive for being there that somehow involved Cambias.

Zach did have a secret motive. But Cambias Industries had nothing to do it.

"Cute kid," Zach said to Ryan and Greenlee, motioning toward the recently incarcerated Spike, who was happily occupied in taking apart his Tickle Me Elmo.

"We like him," Greenlee said. "Why are you here?"

Zach grinned at Greenlee's pull-no-punches attitude.

"I need to ask you two something."

Greenlee and Ryan nodded together.

"Ask away," Ryan invited, still wary.

"Yeah, ask away," Dixie echoed, having no idea what was on her best friend's mind.

"Does Erica Kane have a daughter?" Zach asked, his words falling out too fast to make it seem as casual a question as he wanted it to seem. "Besides Bianca, I mean."

"Not that she knows of," Greenlee deadpanned.

"Greenlee means, 'no'," Ryan translated. "Bianca and Josh are Erica's only children."

Ryan and Erica had always been close, Zach knew. If anybody could tell him about another daughter, it would be Ryan. And Greenlee was the daughter of Erica's husband, Jack. Who better to ask?

"Why don't you ask Erica?" Greenlee suggested. "She'd probably be the best authority on the subject."

Zach grimaced. "Erica Kane and I don't speak. Her choice."

Ryan understood that. "Because of what you did to her in Vegas."

Dixie could not let that stand. Zach had told her everything about his dealings with "Lola Dubois". "Zach did everything he could to help Erica in Vegas. She was completely out of control!"

"Part of her charm," Greenlee opined, never having had much use for her stepmother.

Zach settled back on the sofa, stared into his drink and tried to accept the truth. Erica Kane had no other daughter. _She _didn't exist.

"Of course there was that girl who worked at _Enchantment_ for a while. Everybody said they were like mother and daughter. Right up until Kendall tried to steal the Company right out from under Erica."

"Kendall?" Dixie asked, pretending to be interested.

"Yeah, I think that was her name," Greenlee tried to remember. "Kendall Hart." She stood up. "I have a picture of her someplace. _Enchantment _used to send around a holiday card with a group picture. Erica's idea, of course. I think I saved it. Don't ask me why! Would you like to see it, Zach?"

-----------------------------------

_So Kendall has a new plan and Zach has an old card. Wonder what will happen when they compare notes in their next dream! Please return for our next thrilling Zen-episode! And please write me your Review! _


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter Six – "In the Middle of a Metaphor"_

_Previously – In their waking lives, Zendall investigated their dreams of each other. Lily advised Kendall, who suspects that her Dream Lover is real, to ask him for a verifiable fact and Greenlee showed Zach the picture of a girl who everybody once thought was like a daughter to Erica Kane. Her name? Kendall Hart. As we join our Dreamers today, each has much on their minds and in their hearts._

Zach waited by the ship's railing, seemingly oblivious to the rather large iceberg that was dead ahead.

"Funny," a familiar voice greeted him, "you don't _look_ like Leonardo Dicaprio. Am I on the right boat?"

She was dressed in white and silver. Her gown shimmered in the cool night air. _She_ shimmered in the cool night air. He couldn't take his eyes off of her. He couldn't imagine wanting to take his eyes off of her.

"Been waiting long, Handsome?" she asked playfully. He was in a tuxedo, wearing it as if he'd been born to wear one. During the long days, she'd almost forget how manly, how completely devastatingly _manly _he was. He was, therefore, something of a surprise to her every night. Every single, sweet night.

"Catch!" he called, tossing her a life jacket. "This may come in handy, Lovely. We are smack in the middle of a disaster at sea."

"We are smack in the middle of a metaphor," she rephrased, catching the life jacket and throwing it over the side. "You and I are sailing on choppy seas, Matey." She took a deep breath, beating back the waves of desire that were hitting her. She had to find out something from him before coherent thought became impossible. Lily had advised her to ask him for a fact she could check. If it turned out to be true, he was more than her dream. "Tell me something I don't know."

"There's an iceberg closing in on us," he complied. "Or we're closing in on the iceberg. Depends on how you look at it."

"Some fact I'm not aware of," she elaborated. "Tell me something about Las Vegas that I can check."

"They gamble there," he said. "Or did you know that already?"

"Be serious, Zach."

How did she know his name? She was his dream, he reminded himself. Why shouldn't she know his name? He pulled her into his embrace until he could feel her heart beating in time with his. He never wanted her as much as he did then. Was it the sea air? The premonition that disaster was about to befall them? Her amazing eyes? Her luscious lips? Her incredible hair? Her lithe body, that fit his in ways he had never imagined possible?

"Can't be more serious than this," he whispered in her ear before he kissed her again. And again.

"You're Zach Slater," she summarized, trying her best to concentrate as she tried her best to breathe. "We met in Las Vegas when Ryan and I went there to bring home my Mother."

"That was Bianca, not you," he corrected her, not letting her go, wishing he never had to let her go, praying he would never wake up. What did she say? "You remember meeting me in Vegas?"

"I don't remember a thing," she admitted, holding onto him for dear life, "but you _are_ Zach Slater, aren't you?"

"Yes," he confirmed, caressing her luxuriant auburn hair as it blew free in the evening air. "And you are Kendall Hart."

That got her attention. "Yes! But I never told you my name! How did you know?"

"He knows because he's part of your dream," a dreary voice inside her head intoned. "How else could he know?"

She stepped away from him and watched the iceberg float nearer. That was an illusion, wasn't it? They were moving toward the iceberg, not the other way around.

"Ryan and Greenlee showed me a picture of you," he explained, following her worried gaze. "In my Pine Valley, they're married."

"In my Pine Valley, Greenlee divorced Ryan and left town," Kendall said, totally bewildered. "A picture of me? Why would they have a picture of me?"

He explained about the Enchantment holiday card.

"They said you were like a daughter to Erica Kane. Right up until you stabbed her in the back and tried to steal her Company out from under her."

Kendall frowned. "I _am _a daughter to Erica Kane."

Zach nodded, unwilling to argue the point. "I'm going to find you, now that I know you exist," he informed her. "Nothing can stop me."

She didn't take the news all that well. "You _did_ find me!" she insisted. "After I woke up last night, you appeared outside my bedroom window!"

"I know I did," he told her, gently taking her back into his arms. (He wasn't able to be near her for longer than three minutes without touching her. Once he timed it.) "That was how my dream ended. In front of your bedroom window." An awkward question came to mind. "Why didn't you ever tell me you and Ryan are lovers?"

Suddenly sad, she rested her head on his chest. "We're not lovers. We're married."

He didn't take the news all that well. In fact, he broke away from her and began to yell his head off.

"How could you marry Lavery?"

"What do you care?" she cried out. "You think I'm some backstabber who used to work for my Mother!"

"I want you to be real!" he hollered in his own defense, wanting to shake her until she understood how much he needed her in his life, only that might hurt her and he could never hurt her. "Why should I go on living in dreams, if there's a chance I can find you?"

He was a study in pain as he said those words.

"It won't be _me_," she said miserably, knowing he didn't know what that meant, barely beginning to know herself what that meant. "And the Zach Slater I can look for in Las Vegas won't be you."

They stood together staring at the oncoming iceberg.

"Maybe reasonable facsimiles are the best we can do," he suggested.

"Maybe," she granted. "Maybe not. Please give me a fact about Zach Slater that I can check. If it's confirmed, we'll have proof that this isn't my dream or your dream. It's _our_ dream! It will mean that both of us exist! Somewhere. Somehow."

"And then what?" he asked, momentarily allowing for the possibility.

She put her hands on his broad shoulders. "At least we'll know we're not nuts. You can still go find your stupid Kendall Hart, if you need to."

"And you'll take up with your stupid Zach Slater?" he asked, as if she were real.

"I'm not taking up with anybody," she told them both. "I'm married to Ryan. I have everything I've ever dreamed of."

That did it. She used his favorite phrase. She was nothing but a dream. Still…

"Please, Zach! One fact! Anything I can check so I'll know this is real, and I'm not crazy!"

"This isn't real," he thought. "And I'm the one who is crazy."

"Zach Slater's father was Alexander Cambias," he told her. "Zach Slater is Alexander Cambias, Jr."

The Titanic slammed into the iceberg, and Zach and Kendall woke up in their separate realities.

--------------------------------

_Will Zendall find a way to find each other or will they be satisfied with reasonable facsimiles? Please return for our next exciting Chapter when we may find out if two Zendalls are better than one! Please review, so I'll know I'm not dreaming!_


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter Seven – "Unreasonable Facsimiles"_

_Previously: Zendall has discovered the existence of each other's counterparts. Kendall convinced Zach to give her a fact she could check with the Zach who was in her world. If he admitted he was really Alexander Cambias, Jr., it would mean that the Dream Zach is more than a dream. Possibly. As for Zach, he needs to meet the Kendall Hart who inhabits his world because he desperately needs Kendall Hart, any Kendall Hart, in his waking life._

Frustrated, Kendall Hart jumped out of a taxi in the middle of a traffic jam and with quick, angry strides marched the six blocks to her office in Midtown Manhattan. She hated Mondays, Manhattan, her job, and her life, not exactly in that order. It was October, and in what she was convinced was a cosmic conspiracy, the sharp tang in the air combined with the perfect blue sky to mock her solitary soul. "Autumn in New York," she mused. "Big deal."

Her secretary greeted her at the elevator. "There's a man in your office," she whispered urgently. "I said you weren't in! I asked him to wait out here in the lobby! I told him nobody was allowed in your office when you're not there! He wouldn't take no for an answer!"

"Call Security!" Kendall commanded. She turned that over in her mind and decided slicing and dicing a total stranger might be just the way to kick start her week. "Never mind, Ethel. I'll throw him out myself." She hesitated. "Did he seem dangerous?"

Ethel shivered. "Define 'dangerous'."

-------------------------

Ryan was at his wit's end. Two nights ago he had woken to find his wife climbing out of their bedroom window. Nothing she had said in answer to his several hundred questions had offered any reasonable explanation for her bizarre behavior.

"What are you doing? Looking for who? You saw somebody standing out there? Why didn't you wake me up? Why didn't you call the Police? Kendall, is anything the matter? Kendall, what's wrong? Kendall, are you okay?"

Ryan sensed that Kendall was light years away from okay, despite all of her protestations to the contrary. Last night was, however, comparatively uneventful. She slept without waking until morning. Lying beside her, afraid to move, Ryan watched her for hours, wondering what was making her smile and worrying when she began to breathe harder. She called out a few times, but he couldn't make out what it was she said. Once when she arched her back, he thought she was about to waken, but she fell back with a mysteriously joyful look on her still slumbering face. When she did wake up, it was with a start.

"Damn!" she cried out. "Damn! Damn! Damn!"

"Kendall, are you alright?" Ryan asked her, convinced she was anything but.

"Stupid iceberg," she explained, before rolling over and drifting off again, to who knew where?

Later that morning, he showered and shaved while she dozed. She was yawning and stretching when he came back into the bedroom, so he took a stab at normal morning conversation.

"Any big plans today?" he asked her while he dressed..

"I need to make a phone call," she reported as if that was an extraordinarily important fact.

She was grateful she could remember Zach revealing to her that his true identity was Alexander Cambias, Jr. When had she begun to remember the dreams so well? At first beyond the memory of incendiary passion, she had carried little back with her when she awoke. Thankfully, she remembered everything in this last dream up to and including the iceberg.

"I need to call somebody in Las Vegas."

-------------------------

Zach Slater was in New York City, on the 38th floor of an office building on Sixth Avenue and 52nd Street, wondering what he was doing there, when Kendall Hart strode in and demanded he leave or else.

"I don't see anybody without an appointment," she informed him as coldly as she knew how, which was several hundred degrees below freezing. She pretended not to notice how he was looking at her. Had anybody ever looked at her that way before? What was that in the stranger's eyes? Interest? Adoration? Desire?

"Whatever it is, it's creeping the hell out of me," Kendall thought, reconsidering her decision not to have Ethel call Security.

"I should have made an appointment," he was apologizing in a deep, rich voice that made her cringe. "My name is Zach Slater." Why was he looking at her as if that meant anything to her? As if _he_ meant anything to her?

She was wearing her hair in a tight bun, which Zach was trying, and failing to admire. "It's only a hairstyle," he was telling himself. "She's real. That's all that matters." He could see her, hear her, smell her, touch her and he wouldn't wake up to nothingness.

"If you leave now, I won't have you arrested," she told him forcefully, regretting an earlier decision not to keep one of her handguns in her desk.

He looked nothing if not taken aback.

"I don't mean you any harm, Ms. Hart," he was assuring her at warp speed. He was sure his heart was beating at a volume she could hear. Calm, he needed to appear calm. She mustn't think he was some lunatic who had bulldozed his way into her office. It was the truth, he realized soberly, but she mustn't think that. "I only want to speak with you. I believe we have an acquaintance in common. Erica Kane."

A nerve in Kendall's right temple began to twitch. She pushed her rimless glasses back on her nose.

"If you leave now, I won't have you arrested," she repeated.

"You said that already," he told her.

"Everything Erica Kane has said about me is a lie," she told him.

"I believe you," he told her.

"Why won't you go away?" she demanded. "Who are you? What do you want? You can't be with the Police. I haven't been in Pine Valley for ten years. The Statue of Limitations ran out after seven."

Ten years? She was older than his Kendall, he realized. But not by much. Maybe she was in her thirties. Middle thirties. He didn't mind that. He didn't mind the glasses. He was getting used to the bun.

"Stop looking at me that way!" She picked up the phone. "Ethel, call Security. I can't get this idiot to go bye-bye. No, I'm fine. He's harmless."

_That, _he minded.

------------------------

"I remember you, Ms. Hart," Zach Slater's voice said to Kendall Hart later that day in her reality.

She had finally forced herself to place the call she had told Ryan about. She could sense how unimportant, if somewhat odd, he had considered it. Of course, as their discussion continued, his level of interest had intensified somewhat.

"Why would you want to call Zach Slater after all this time?" he had asked her, remembering with slight distaste their run-in in Vegas. "Why would you want to call Zach Slater at all?"

"It's about something my Mother said about him," Kendall said, hoping the vagueness in her lie wouldn't intrigue her husband. "Something she said about him didn't make sense."

Ryan looked her dead in the eye. "Why do you care what Erica says about Zach Slater?"

"Shut up, Kendall," she instructed herself. "Or tell a better lie. Do not mention the word 'dream' to Ryan." She ignored her own advice, as it dawned upon her that Ryan might remember something about the real Zach. Since she couldn't remember _anything_ about the real Zach, it might help to ask.

"I don't care what my Mother says about Zach Slater," she said. "But I've been dreaming about him, and I don't understand why. Ryan, did we meet him together when we went after my Mother?"

Ryan nodded mutely. "You've been dreaming about him?" he asked, no longer mute.

She never meant to begin this discussion with Ryan. She never wanted him to have any inkling about her passionate dreams with a man she couldn't remember meeting. "Too late now," she thought.

"The thing is, I don't remember meeting Zach Slater," she said uneasily.

Ryan then posed the next logical question. "Then how could you be dreaming about him?"

"That's just it. I don't know how. That's why I need to speak with him. Maybe something he'll say will jar my memory and I'll figure out what he's doing in my unconscious." She didn't tell him the real reason she needed to speak with Zach Slater. She didn't mention the question of his true identify which she needed to check in order verify her Dream Lover's reality. How could she tell that to Ryan? She would sound like she was in love with somebody else. Also, she would sound like she had lost her mind. "Maybe something happened between us in Las Vegas that I've been repressing. Ryan, did Zach Slater make a pass at me?"

"Not hardly," Ryan said immediately. "Zach Slater is gay."

_Not that there's anything wrong with that, but how will Kendall deal with that fact of life? And how will Straight Zach deal with the Kendall he's just encountered in his world? Perplexed? Confused? Confounded? Wait till next week! If you send me your Review, you'll make MY reality a whole lot better!_


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter Eight – "It's Almost Coming Back to Them Now"_

_Previously – Zach traveled to West 52nd Street to meet the Kendall who is part of his reality, and discovered how different two Kendalls can be. As we join today's episode, the Kendall we know best has learned that even if she didn't have everything she ever dreamed of, she and the real Zach Slater have zero romantic future, since according to Ryan, she is not his type._

------------------------

Kendall did not care about Zach Slater's sexual orientation, one way or another. At least not about the _real_ Zach's s sexual orientation. Actually, anybody's sexual orientation was fine and dandy with her, even her brother Josh's. At long as Josh was happy. That was the important thing. The only thing. As for Non-Dream Zach, she didn't care if he was happy or not. He was a complete and utter stranger to her. Even speaking to him now on the phone, no bells began ringing. Everybody told her they had met in Las Vegas the year before. But…

"I don't remember meeting you, Mr. Slater. You say you remember me?"

"Vividly," he assured her in a voice she knew and yet didn't know at all. "I'm still not clear on why you're calling me now, however."

"That makes two of us," she thought. "I heard something about you," he said. "And I wanted to check it out."

"It's probably true," he said cheerfully, jumping to the obvious but entirely incorrect conclusion. "But why on earth would you care?"

"It's about your true identity," she tried to clarify.

"Definitely," he agreed.

She was certain they were speaking at cross-purposes and offending him was the last thing she wanted to do.

"Somebody told me you are really Alexander Cambias, Jr."

Long silence at Real Zach's end.

"Somebody told you the truth," he said to her at last. "Not that it matters anymore."

Kendall nearly fainted with joy. It was true! Her Zach had revealed something about Real Zach that she herself couldn't possibly know! Whatever that meant, her dreams had to be more than dreams! Her Zach had to be more than a fantasy! This proved it! The discovery had her literally reeling with excitement.

"Thank you SO much," she heard herself telling Real Zach. "You have no idea what this means to me!"

"You're right, I don't," Real Zach agreed, completely bewildered. "Did you know my father or my brother Michael?"

Kendall answered without thinking. "I didn't know your father, but my sister murdered your brother after he raped her."

------------------------

Dixie would have missed the call from the New York City Police had she not overslept She had a 3:00 pm appointment with Tad, and she was running later than late. They were going to look at some more computer enhancements of photographs of babies who had been adopted about the time of their Kate's adoption. The computer SORASED the photographs to Kate's current age of thirty-five. It never led anywhere, and Dixie was sure she had overslept out of an unconscious desire not to go through it all again. On her way out, the phone rang.

"Yes, I'm Dixie Cooney," she said at once. "Yes, I'm a good friend of Zach Slater. He's WHERE?"

------------------------

Ryan and Kendall were having dinner with his brother Jonathan and her sister/sister-in-law Lily. And Spike, of course.

"Did it work?" Lily greeted Kendall.

"Did what work?" Ryan and Jonathan asked in unison.

"Excuse us a second!" Kendall replied, taking Lily's arm and dragging her into the kitchen.

"Something crazy happened," she whispered to her when she was out of the Brothers Lavery's earshot.

"Something crazy is always happening," Lily replied. "We live in Pine Valley."

Kendall nodded. She was desperate to tell Lily what happened, even though it still baffled her.

"I spoke to the real Zach Slater today," she revealed in hushed and hurried tones. "He remembered me from Vegas although I didn't remember him."

"That's not all that cra—"

"I began telling him weird stuff about his brother Michael and my sister Bianca. I told him awful things, Lily! And I don't know why I said them!"

"Maybe you said them because they were true," Lily theorized.

------------------------

After being bailed at of jail by his best friend, Zach returned the favor by taking her to dinner and checking them into the Waldorf.

"Wish I could say I've never done it with a jailbird," Dixie confided to him when they were in bed. "But you know what a checkered past I've had."

"Your checkered past is one of things I like most about you," Zach bantered back, doing his best to sound interested in what she was saying.

"We don't have to make love if you're not into it," Dixie said, ever alert to the nuances. "You've been through a lot today." She didn't mention that he hadn't gotten around to telling her exactly why he had been arrested. The charges were "Unlawful Entry" and "Disorderly Conduct".

"It was a case of Mistaken Identity," was all he would tell her.

"The Police said you tried to kiss a woman you didn't know," she had said over dinner.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Zach had commented.

"I'll understand if you only want to cuddle tonight," Dixie told him now.

But he was already sleeping.

------------------------

She was standing by their cliff, her arms overflowing with heather.

"Is that for me?" he asked her, so damn grateful that it was her, not a girl who almost looked, almost spoke, almost acted like her.

"I've brought you more than this," she announced, happily presenting him with the heather. "I've brought the best news!"

He threw the heather away and took her in his arms, fairly certain she wouldn't have him arrested.

"The real Zach Slater is Alexander Cambias, Jr.," she told him breathlessly. "You don't have to stop kissing me. I can tell you the rest later!"

"Tell me now," he demanded, burying his head next to her heart.

Ecstatic, she clasped him to her bosom, bending back in wild abandon, as they slowly sank to the ground, coming together like two people dying of thirst who happened upon an oasis in the midst of a desert that went on forever.

"Tell me later," he breathed heavily, terrified she would disappear or that he would wake up.

She didn't disappear. He didn't wake up.

"I adore your Heathcliff," she laughed much later, looking up his handsomely rugged face which was, at that moment, still awash with longing and desire. "You do dark and brooding like nobody's business! ' Wuthering Heights' is my absolute favorite!"

"Kendall is my absolute favorite," he told her in no uncertain terms. "This Kendall. The one in my arms. Not the one in Manhattan."

She was nothing if not delighted to hear that. "Oh, Heathcliff, baby, did you not get along so well with the other me?"

"You could say that," he said. "How was the other Zach?" He hoped the question sounded casual although he knew that it couldn't possibly sound that way.

"Jealous?" she teased, trying to remember the last time she felt this alive.

"How can I be jealous of myself?" he asked them both. And then he answered them both. "I am incredibly jealous. I sincerely hope you hated me. Him. You know what I mean."

"I didn't hate him," Kendall said, dashing his hopes. "I liked him. But he had the most peculiar effect on me. I began babbling some nonsense about my sister killing your brother."

Zach sat straight up, as if a bolt of lightening had struck him, which was exactly how he felt.

"Hey, Heathcliff, honey, where you going?"

He couldn't hear her through the roar in his head. "Bianca did kill my brother Michael," he remembered, his voice hollow with horror. "After the bastard raped her!"

Kendall could barely breathe. She kneeled next to Zach, who was still sitting transfixed.

"Bianca killed my brother Michael!" he groaned, holding his suddenly aching head in his suddenly shaking hands. "Michael was a monster! My brother was a monster!"

Kendall swallowed hard. She was remembering the same things as Zach and as awful as those things were, the fact that they were both remembering the same horrors, horrors that had never really occurred, was not lost upon her.

"Zach, none of what we remember ever happened!" she said to him, her voice urgent and caring. "Not in either of our Pine Valleys! My sister Bianca is happily married to the only man she's ever been with. I never even met your brother, Michael!" She put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Of course, her touch revived him at once. "In my world, Bianca lives in Paris with Babe Chandler," he told her. 'My brother Michael was murdered, but Bianca wasn't even in the country when it happened."

"Any suspects?" Kendall asked as a point of information.

"Your Mother, more than anybody else, but nobody could ever make a case against her."

"Figures," Kendall said. "So what do we know? We are remembering parts of the same fictional storyline. Why?"

Zach shrugged. "Because we're both in my dream." He looked weary and beaten.

But Kendall wasn't having any of it. "Oh, we're back to that, are we? Zach, get over it! We're not in separate dreams! You told me something that checked out! I phoned Las Vegas, and that Zach admitted he's Alexander Cambias, Jr., just like you told me!"

"But you never told me anything I could check," he reminded her gently. "As far as I know, you're a fantasy I've created to keep from going over the edge. Or, more likely, because I've _already_ gone over the edge."

She bit her lip. Their realities were so radically dissimilar, she wasn't sure anything she could tell him would prove true. Nevertheless, she decided to give it a whirl.

"What do you know about Erica?"

Zach thought hard. "She probably killed my brother."

"Besides that."

"Everything," he laughed, amazed that he still could laugh after the hideous visions he had dredged up from some particularly dark part of his soul. "Lovely, your Mother is known throughout the civilized and uncivilized worlds. No part of her life is secret."

"She never eats," Kendall told him. "I mean it, Zach. When we have dinner together, she drinks some tea and that's it."

He did his best to follow her train of thought. "You're suggesting I have dinner with your Mother so I can watch her not eat? Lovely, your Mother despises me! I'm the last man on the planet she would ever have dinner with!"

Kendall waved that off. "That's only because you kidnapped me from Madden's Island and married me without giving her a chance to stop the wedding. You know she's all Rendall."

They shared an uncomfortable silence.

"Madden had an island?" Zach asked at last. "In your reality, Madden had an island?"

Kendall shook her head. "In my reality, there is no Madden. Who's Madden, Zach? And why do I think he had an island? AND WHY DO I THINK YOU AND I ARE MARRIED?"

------------------------

_Hmm. Memories not in the storyline of the reality either of them inhabits? Could this mean anything? Could it mean EVERYTHING? Please return next week as our plot thickens even further. Reviews are definitely welcome in ANY of my realities!_


	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter Nine – "Musings"_

_Previously – Zendall is beginning to have disturbing memories about a shared past in some other Pine Valley.. To prove she exists somewhere other than in his dreams, Kendall revealed a seldom-noticed fact about Erica Kane. She never eats. Kendall begged Zach to witness that behavior for himself as a way to prove to him that Kendall is really real._

--

Erica Kane was determined to have a relaxing brunch at the Valley Inn with Jackson Montgomery, her current husband and most likely the love of her life. There had been too much keeping her at odds with her husband as of late. All their children were getting in the way of their marriage, and she had made her mind up to set matters right for once and for all. She was highly optimistic about the outcome. After all, when Erica Kane made her mind up to do something, what could stand in her way?

"Jack, above all else it is crucial that we agree to disagree. That's what Jonathan taught Lily to do, and it seems to be working so well for them!"

Jack upper lip tightened along with every major muscle group in his entire body.

"I realize you haven't quite accepted Jonathan as your son-in-law but – oh, for pity's sake what in the world is HE doing here?"

--

It was nearly noon, but Kendall was still in bed, thinking things through. She was half-surprised not to have awakened with heather in her hair. It had seemed so real. Hell, it _always _seemed so real. She blinked back tears.

"Don't go soft on me now," she urged herself. "We're getting close to the truth. Don't go distracting yourself with sentimental musings. It won't do any good."

The first musing she mused was anything but sentimental. "If Zach is real, I am committing adultery. Big-time. I am betraying Ryan every single night. Why don't I care?"

That was easy. She was completely, irrevocably and astoundingly in love with Zach Slater. Whether he was actual or imaginary, they belonged to each other. They belonged _with _each other. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name: Kendall Hart Slater.

"That isn't my name!" she told herself, not for the first time. "Why do I keep thinking that's my name?" Which led her to other musings. Why all the false memories she and Zach shared? Were they false? Were they memories? Were they married? How could they have identical memories of events that had never happened in either of their realities?

She was only certain of one thing. What she felt for her actual husband – what did she feel for Ryan? – was thoroughly beside the point. If there was a way to get to Zach Slater, she'd abandon her life with Ryan Lavery in a Pine Valley Minute.

"I am one cold, heartless bitch adulteress," she told herself in no uncertain terms. "So why do I feel like crying? No cold, heartless bitch adulteress worth her salt would break down and cry simply because she can't share her reality with the only person who makes her feel real."

Ah, but she missed him. He wasn't beside her. Talking to her. Laughing with her. Overwhelming her with desire and passion so intense it made her --. That's why she felt like crying. That's why she felt like dying.

--

Dixie was looking over the SORASED photographs Tad had given her yesterday of the latest batch of possible Kates. All of them were beautiful and accomplished. One of them was the Head Writer of a daytime drama (not AMC). But which one of those beautiful, accomplished women was her Kate? The Soap Writer looked vaguely familiar, but that could be her imagination. Through the years of searching for Kate, wishful thinking had taken Dixie down too many blind alleys to count.

She knew Zach could help her decide which woman to track down first. But he was so distracted lately. Something was terribly wrong, she sensed. What? And where the hell was Zach anyway? She had called him four times that morning, and all she got was his damn machine. She hoped he wasn't in New York bothering that woman again. What had that been about? Why would Zach try to kiss another woman? A stranger? In New York yet?

Something was going on. Something had been going on for months. He was even more distant than usual. He had grown even darker. He seemed to be brooding about something, even when they were making love, which wasn't nearly as often as she would like. And he was spending too much time sleeping.

Dixie sniffed, dejected and frustrated all at the same time. How could she help him, if he wouldn't tell her what was going on? There had to be a way to find out. They had gone through too much together for too long to let him slip away now.

"Zaxie forever," she sighed, wishing that were true.

--

"Oh, go away," Erica Kane was telling Zach Slater with all of her heart. "For the final time, I did not kill your brother Michael. What will it take to satisfy you? A blood oath?"

"A polygraph test would be nice," he replied evenly, gazing down at Erica's untouched Eggs Benedict.

"Slater, I'm getting a Restraining Order!" Jackson announced, much to Erica's delight. "Enough is enough!"

"Those eggs look delicious," Zach observed. "Yum!"

"Everybody knows that polygraphs are as unreliable as DNA tests," Erica said, making no move to lift her fork.

"Especially in this town," Zach agreed. "Why aren't you eating, Erica?"

Speechless, Erica looked down at her uneaten brunch.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

--

It was after two o'clock and Kendall was still thinking things through. Ryan had called a few times. She had told him that nothing was wrong and immediately began to feel guilty again. "The next dream will probably be 'The Scarlet Letter' she predicted gloomily.

"What's the matter with me?" she said out loud, annoyed with the pity party she was throwing herself.. "I have everything I've ever dreamed of!"

Well, hardly. That was the point, wasn't it? She wondered what he was doing at that moment, in his reality. Dining with Erica? Dancing with Dixie? Kissing the only Kendall in his world and getting arrested again? Where was his reality anyway? Somewhere in the past or in the future? Whose past? Whose future? On Earth? In another Galaxy long ago and far away? On another Network? Too far out. Okay, how about something more mundane? They were simply in parallel universes. Was that still science fiction or had that concept morphed into theoretical physics? "I must ask Lily to tell me about string theory," she decided, making a mental note.

Then she began obsessing on another subject she'd rather not think about. What if they couldn't find a way to find each other? What if their parallel universes were too parallel? Parallel lines never meet, what if Zach and Kendall could never meet? What if their dreams were all that they would ever have? She considered that. Well, where was the tragedy? Their dreams were more than most people had in all of their waking lives. And if she couldn't get to Zach, she'd never have to leave Ryan and shatter his world. She could continue spending her days with the husband who adored her and her nights with her lover in Casablanca or Shangri-La or wherever else their wild imaginings took them. Wouldn't she and Zach have the best of all possible worlds? Wouldn't Ryan? Wouldn't that be the best thing for everyone concerned?

"Yes," she thought.

"Maybe," she thought again.

"No!" she knew.

--

Dixie was waiting for Zach when he got back to his penthouse at the Casino.

"We need to talk," she told him flatly.

Why was he beaming at her? Why wasn't he his normal dark and brooding self all of a sudden?

"Love to talk with you, but I can't now," he begged off, heading for his bedroom. "I've gotta get some sleep."

"That's what we need to talk about!" she cried out, blocking his path. "It's four o'clock in the afternoon! Why do want to go to sleep? Zach you've got to let me in! What's going on?"

"Well," he thought, "it turns out the Girl of My Dreams may actually exist. Ain't that a kick in the head?"

"Did you ever notice that Erica Kane never eats?" he asked, edging past her into his bedroom.

"Zach, if you're in any trouble, you know I'm here for you!" she managed to get in before he closed the bedroom door in her face.

"We'll talk later!" he promised through the door. "When I wake up, I'll call you!"

--

"This isn't 'The Scarlet Letter'," Kendall was fairly certain, looking around. She appeared to be standing in a small, astonishingly colorful one-room hut. There were seven small beds lined up in two rows and one larger bed set apart from them. There was a sturdy oak table in the center of the hut surrounded by eight chairs, seven of which were half the size of the eighth chair.

"You're looking animated, Lovely," Zach observed merrily.

At the sound of his voice, she spun around and dived into his open arms.

"I might look animated because we're in a cartoon," she breathed between kisses.

He picked her up and carried her to the larger bed.

"Zach, we can't!" she protested weakly. "This is 'Snow White'! I'll never be able to look at it the same way again! What happens when I play the DVD for Spike?"

He deposited her on Snow White's bed and stood up, gathering his thoughts. "Ryan and Greenlee's son Spike?"

That didn't sound right. "Jonathan and Lily's son Spike?" she tried.

That didn't sound right either.

"Zendall's son Spike!" they said together, neither having the faintest idea how that could be.

Much later, after they left the hut and found themselves in Sherwood Forest where they both decided anything went, Zach reported on his brunch with Erica.

"There exists a possibility that you are real, Lovely," he concluded happily. "Somewhere. Somehow."

"Told ya so," she laughed, playfully poking his ribs. "So what's our next move, Handsome?"

He had absolutely no idea.

Luckily she did.

"Something must have happened in Las Vegas," she theorized. "Something that has to do with us, our dreams, our separate realities. There has to be a reason I don't remember meeting you. Meeting him. You know what I mean."

He knew what she meant. He also knew something else. "Kendall, we may never find a way to be together when we're not asleep."

She couldn't bring herself to accept that. "Dreams aren't enough, Zach. We need to be with each other full-time. Sleeping and waking. In sickness and in health. For richer and for poorer. The whole nine yards."

He hugged her hard. "We have Sherwood Forest. That's more than most people have."

"It isn't enough," she repeated, hugging back harder. Then she realized why it wasn't enough.

"We need to find Spike. _Our_ Spike. Zach, I think in some reality we used to share, Spike is our son."

While, amazingly enough, he felt the same way, Zach Slater was not given to having high hopes.

"We may never be able to get back to that reality," he told her sadly, "We may never be able to find Spike or each other.

She broke out of their embrace and looked him straight in the eye. "I don't believe that for a second." She took a deep breath and told him what she _did _believe to the core of her being.

"The truth is out there."

--

_The truth is out there? Where have we seen that before? Next week's Dream is "Zendall, the Musical"! Also we will meet a Special Guest Star who points Kendall in the right direction. Possibly. Thanks for the Reviews and please send more!_


	10. Chapter 10

_Chapter Ten –"West Side Zendall and Viva Las Vegas"_

_Previously: Zach observed Erica Kane not eating, and Kendall decided to go to Las Vegas to search for the truth. In their dream, they both realized they have a son in some parallel Pine Valley. Their dream continues . . . _

--

Our Dreamers dreamed on.

When she realized she was no longer with Zach in Sherwood Forest, Kendall, who had already decided to go to Las Vegas when she woke up that morning, assumed she had landed in an Elvis Presley movie, and was fully prepared to fight Ann-Margaret for Zach's attentions or Elvis' attentions, as the case may be. She hoped her hardest that Ann-Margaret wouldn't be played by Dixie, who had appeared in several of their Dreams (once as Glinda, the Good Witch of the East, a role Kendall would never have picked out for her). But that wasn't the world Kendall found herself in. Instead, she was in the middle of a run-down playground complete with broken swings. The ground was littered with empty coke bottles, also broken, and empty cigarette packs.

"This spot seems in desperate need of urban renewal," she commented to herself.

She heard him before she saw him. He was singing. To the tune of "Maria". (No, not _that_ Maria!)

_Where's Kendall?  
I'm here in a dream about  
Kendall _

_I'm with her every night  
Until the dawn's cruel light  
Appears_

_There's Kendall!  
I can't have a dream without  
Kendall_

_My life is full of bleep  
But when I fall asleep  
Who cares?_

_Ah, Kendall  
Say it loud and there's music playing  
Say it soft  
And it's nothing like praying_

My Kendall!  
I'll never stop dreaming of  
Kendall!

She began running to him, singing as she went, to the tune of "I Feel Pretty":

_I feel sleazy  
Slightly sleazy  
I feel sleazy and breezy and bright!_

_Am I easy  
Cause I want Zach more  
And more each night?_

I am married  
I'm so married  
Though at this point I'm not sure to whom

I feel harried  
Will our dreams lead us  
To certain doom?

_Our realities are so far apart  
(So far apart!)  
His Pine Valley isn't my own_

Why am I so sure  
That we lived before?  
It's so Twilight Zone!

_I feel frightened  
And frustrated  
Yet elated, so fears take a hike  
I love Zach and I'm crazy about  
Our son, Spike!_

"We're in a musical!" Kendall cried out to him as she jumped into his waiting arms. "How cool is that!"

"Very cool," Zach agreed, noticing two groups of teenagers gathering on opposite sides of the playground. They seemed nothing if not menacing. "Do they generally have gang warfare in musicals?" he asked her as a point of information, since he much preferred film-noir mysteries.

"In this one they did," Kendall recalled. "With high kicks and everything!"

Zach turned his attention away from the immanent violence. "You're guessing our answer is in Vegas?"

She nodded. "I'm sure of it, Zach. As soon as I wake up, I'm getting on a plane."

The teenagers had begun to leap threateningly at each other.

"I'll be spending the day with Dixie," he heard himself saying. He regretted it immediately. "My friend, who's going through a rough patch. I told you about her." Kendall wasn't smiling. "But you'll be the one on my mind."

Kendall couldn't resist asking the obvious. "Why do you feel compelled to spend your waking hours with that pathetic played out hussy?" She sniffed. "Exactly what is so alluring about playing dead for four years?"

He had never told her that Dixie had been presumed dead for four years. He supposed there was a Dixie in Kendall's Pine Valley.

"What's Dixie like in your world?" he asked innocently enough.

"Who's Dixie?" Kendall replied. "Oh, the rough patch? She's not in my world!"

Kendall frowned in thought.

"Then how did I know she was presumed dead for four years?" she asked Zach.

He wished he knew. "What else do you remember about Dixie?"

Kendall considered that one heck of a crazy question. How could she remember things about somebody she never met?

"She was married to Tad, went to Switzerland to have their baby and was presumed dead in a car crash. She survived the crash somehow, had her baby, and was talked into giving her away by the infamous Dr. Gregory Madden. Oh, Zach, if you hadn't kidnapped me, I'd have given Spike to Madden just like Dixie did!"

A full-scale rumble had broken out all round them, complete with switchblade knives and pirouettes. Zendall looked only at one another.

"It's happened again," Kendall said finally. "I remembered something from another Pine Valley."

"_Our _Pine Valley," Zach added.

At this point they were face to face, which naturally prompted them to launch into a duet of "Tonight".

Zach:  
_Tonight, tonight  
I dream of you tonight_

Kendall:  
_We're not a dream  
We're real, you and me_

Zach:  
_Tonight, tonight  
Perhaps there's just tonight_

Kendall:  
_Don't despair  
Truth's out there  
Zach, you'll see_

Zach:  
_Today  
I'll look at Dixie's photos  
She needs to find her daughter_

Kendall:  
_I wish she'd fade from sight_

Zach:  
_Oh moon, shine bright  
Kendall, stay with me  
Till the light  
Tonight!_

After the applause from the rumbling teenagers died down a bit, Zach and Kendall walked away arm in arm into the sunset, singing a duet of "Somewhere".

Kendall:  
_There's a place for us_

Zach:  
_A time and place for us_

Kendall:  
S_torylines that we both can bear_

Zach:  
_Storylines that we both can share_

Kendall:  
_Some way_

Zach:  
_Somehow_

Both:  
_But where?_

--

The FBI Agent shifted uncomfortably on the too comfortable chair. He scanned the Casino lobby warily, searching for any of his enemies, who might be hiding, ready to pounce. He didn't enjoy feeling like a sitting duck, although that's what he had come to feel like that most of the time. He checked his watch. His Partner was late. His Partner was never late. Something must have happened. Again. Meeting there was a bad idea. One in a series of bad ideas. She'd call him, he knew. Even if she was in grave danger, she'd call him. Especially if she was in grave danger. Nothing to do but wait until then, he thought. He could go back to his suite, of course. Or return to the afternoon workshop of the International UFO Convention that he had walked out on. The International UFO Convention was their reason for their being in Las Vegas in the first place. But how many times could he stand to watch that same dopy Alien Autopsy Video? Actually he never tired of watching _any_ Alien Autopsy Video. What he was tired of was going around in circles. And not only crop circles.

He focused on the wildly beautiful young woman in the blue sleeveless dress a few feet from him, who was gesturing wildly at the quietly handsome young man in the tweed suit with the cockney accent. He tried to listen to what they were saying. He didn't have to try all that hard since the young woman was screaming at the top of her lungs.

"I need to see Zach Slater!" she was howling. "What part of that don't you understand?"

Aidan Devane regarded the upset young woman benevolently. If women were his cup of tea, this one would definitely be somebody worth chatting up. As it was, all he wanted was for her to disappear as quickly and quietly as possible. He had unceremoniously ushered her out of his Boss' office and down into the lobby. Now if he could only get her on the street and out of his hair.

"Again, I apologize, Ms. --"

"Mrs.," Kendall fumed. "Mrs. Slate – Mrs. Lavery. Look, Zach knows me. We spoke on the phone yesterday. Were I you, Sunshine, I'd head for the hills when he finds out that you wouldn't let me see him."

Aidan gave her a withering look. "As I've already told you, Mrs. Lavery, Mr. Slater is on an all-day teleconference. If you will kindly leave your name, I am certain he will contact as soon as he's free."

"I'll wait," Kendall said as curtly as she could.

"He may be unavailable for hours," Aidan sneered in reply. "And hours."

"Well, I've got nowhere else to go," Kendall said expansively, plopping down on the chair next to a stranger. "Be a good lad and inform your Boss that I'll be right here whenever he surfaces. Whether you like it or not."

"That's telling him," the FBI Agent told her when Aidan exited in a huff.

"I don't know when Aidan became such a twit," Kendall confided, still annoyed.

"You know that guy?" her new friend asked her, surprised.

"No, of course not," Kendall replied. "Never saw him before in my life."

She began to hum.

"Catchy tune," he said to her.

"I've been humming it since I left Pine Valley this morning," she said to him. "I'd give anything to stop. I think it's from a Broadway Show. Or a Movie. Or my Dream. Or all three."

"It's 'I Feel Pretty'," he informed her, Show Tunes being one of his minor fields of interest. "From 'West Side Story'. Words and Music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim."

She nodded, still humming.

"So how did you know the twit's name was Aidan?" he persisted, since it was in his nature to persist.

She stopped humming. "Your guess is a good as mine," she sighed, having no notion of how she knew Aidan's name. One more Mystery Memory. "Think he'll tell Zach Slater I'm here?"

"Fifty-fifty chance," the stranger estimated. "Why do you need to see Slater so badly?"

Not the it was any of his business, he thought. But Scully wasn't calling and he needed to pass the time.

"It's a long, unbelievable story," the beautiful young woman was telling him.

"That's my favorite kind," he told her with a smile.

--

_Who could that FBI Agent be and will he help Zendall reunite somehow? Fifty-fifty chance? Please come back next week for a non-singing episode! Promise!_


	11. Chapter 11

_Chapter Eleven – "Falling Apart at the Seams"_

_Previously: In their latest dream, Zendall sang to each other. When she awoke, Kendall headed for Las Vegas, searching for The Truth, while Zach remained in his Pine Valley, helping Dixie search for Kate._

------------------------

True to his word, Zach called Dixie the first thing upon awakening. Well, almost the first thing. First, he thought about Kendall, showered, thought about Kendall, shaved, thought about Kendall, dressed, and thought about Kendall. Then, as he thought about Kendall, he called Dixie.

"Breakfast at the Valley Inn?" he proposed, wondering if he'd catch another glimpse of Erica not eating.

"No, come to my place," Dixie requested. "We need to go over the latest batch of photos."

Of course he knew which photos she meant. Possible Kates. How long had they been going over photos like that? Years, he knew. He sighed, checked his watch and calculated how long he had to go before bedtime. "Too long," he sighed. He walked out the door, whistling "Somewhere".

------------------------

Ryan was rereading the note Kendall left. He still couldn't get over it.

"Had to go out of town on business. Will be back soon."

"Wow," he said. "Wow."

------------------------

"So you're saying you and this guy crossed over from a parallel universe, got plunked down into two other parallel universes and are getting together in your dreams," the FBI Agent was summarizing.

"That's my working hypothesis," Kendall affirmed, endeavoring to sound like Lily. "How much do you know about string theory?"

"Not much," he admitted. "But I met a guy upstairs at the Convention who's a whiz on time travel. Most likely, he knows a thing or two about parallel universes and inter-dimensional crossovers too. If that helps any."

"You met him at the International UFO Convention?" Kendall asked warily. "Oh, what the hell. Take me to your Leader!"

Which he might have, if his phone had not begin to vibrate.

"Gotta go," he told Kendall after a short whispered conversation with his Partner. "Scully's in trouble. But you'll find him yourself. He stands out in a crowd. Even that crowd. Say I sent you."

"And you are?" Kendall inquired.

"Fox Mulder."

"And he is?" Kendall inquired.

"The Doctor."

------------------------

Erica had never seen Ryan as distraught as he was when he knocked on her door and fell into her arms.

"She's left me!" he moaned. "Kendall's left me!"

"Oh, no!" Erica commiserated, reaching up to pat his back. "There must be some mistake! Ryan, Kendall loves you with all of her heart! You've given her everything she's ever dreamed of!"

------------------------

Kendall had never imagined she'd be in the middle of a UFO Convention. She still couldn't believe she was there. But with Zach nowhere in sight, she knew she wasn't dreaming.

"Excuse me," she said to a small green man with pointy ears, "I'm looking for the Doctor."

"He doesn't sign autographs," the little green man told her, sounding more than disappointed.

"That isn't what I'm after," Kendall said. "I need to speak with him. It's a matter of -- "

"Life and death?" a cheerful voice behind her asked.

She whirled around and came face to face with a handsome young man of medium height and build. The only spectacular things about him was the look of intense curiosity in his bright blue eyes and the top hat and tails he wore with such elan.

"You're in luck," he told her, his tone as intense as his eyes. "I happen to specialize in matters of life and death."

"I hope you're the Doctor," she breathed. "Oh, how I hope you're the Doctor!"

------------------------

Wordlessly, Zach looked at each photograph until he came to the girl who headed the Writing Staff of a Daytime Drama (not AMC) in New York City.

"I think that's your Kate," he said, although he could barely begin to believe it.

"How can you be sure?" Dixie wanted to know.

"Trust me," he requested. How many times had he asked that of her through the years?

"I thought she looked familiar," Dixie said, hope rising in her broken heart. "She's beautiful, Zach."

"I know," Zach knew. "I'm married to her. Well, I'm married to a version of her."

"I don't understand," Dixie told him because she didn't.

"None of us do," Zach told her because none of them did.

------------------------

Much later that evening, Zach found himself alone on the observation deck of the USS Enterprise. Before him was Space, the Final Frontier.

"Swell," he grumbled. "First musicals, now science fiction. That's all I need."

"I'm all you need," Kendall corrected him, suddenly there in his arms.

He was overwhelmed. Along with the familiar feelings of elation and desire, he felt grief, actual grief, like a sharp blade, twisting in his heart. She was here and they could be together. But she'd be gone with the dawn. Wasn't she always?

"What's the matter, Handsome?" she asked, nuzzling his neck. "You seem not so happy to see me."

"Always happy to see you," he disagreed, embracing her. "It's a blast while it lasts."

There was something new in his voice. Depression? Fatalism? Defeat? She didn't like it, whatever it was.

"What's the matter, Zach?" she asked him pointblank.

"Anybody's guess."

"What's your guess?" she persisted.

He shrugged. "My guess is I'm falling apart at the seams."

That didn't satisfy her. "Be more specific."

He hadn't intended to tell her, but he was too troubled to keep it a secret.

"I found Dixie's daughter. She's you."

Her eyes narrowed as she tried to take that in.

"I'm Erica's daughter," she said. "Erica Kane? The one who never eats?"

He didn't even crack a smile.

"Tad SORASED pictures of Kate. One of the picture is of my world's Kendall Hart. The Kendall Hart I went to see in New York."

"Oh, the one who had you arrested for kissing her?" Kendall asked, trying to keep up.

"Yeah, that one," Zach frowned. "Even if she liked me, how can I be with Dixie's daughter?"

Kendall swallowed hard. "Why do you need to be with stupid Dixie's stupid daughter? We're going to find a way to find each other, remember? That why I'm in Las Vegas!"

But Zach couldn't begin to imagine how Kendall's being in Las Vegas could help them.

"Have you seen your reality's me?" he asked, without much hope.

"Aidan wouldn't let me see him," she revealed. "What happened to that guy? He used to be so great! We used to Friends with Benefits!"

An uncomfortable silence ensued.

"In which Pine Valley, Kendall?" Zach asked, sensing she was remembering something from their shared past.

"He's why Ryan left me," Kendall went on, as the memories flooded back. "He caught us! But I was only throwing myself at Aidan so he would get me into my Mother's penthouse while it was still under construction! I wanted to spy on Erica so I could get the goods on her. I was so vicious in those days!"

"That was before my time," Zach contributed.

"Years before," Kendall affirmed. "You should have seen me then. Actually, you shouldn't have. I was such a mess! I was so angry at my Mother. And I was so in love with Ryan. The Flatleaver. It took me forever to get over him. I never really got over him."

"Yes you did," Zach disagreed. "I took you away from my son, Ethan. Not Ryan."

"But I still loved Ryan," Kendall recalled. "I nearly walked into the Pennsylvania Ocean because of him. It was Ethan who rescued me that night. That was the night I thought I shot Ryan in your damn Murder Game. I shot him with an empty gun, but he wound up nearly dying anyway. I felt so responsible, I wanted to end it all! Ethan saved my life that night."

Zach looked stricken.

"Zach, did Ethan die?" Kendall asked softly, having never met an Ethan in her Pine Valley..

"In my Pine Valley he did," Zach told her, unable to keep the pain out of his voice. "And in our Pine Valley, I think he did also."

"I married you to make Ethan jealous," Kendall remembered. "And because I was through with love. I actually believed being married to you would keep me safe from falling in love."

"I married you to keep you two apart so Ethan would have no reason to stay in Pine Valley," Zach remembered.

"But then something happened. You and I fell madly in love in spite of ourselves," Kendall remembered. "But we kept divorcing each other. And I was inseminated with Ryan's baby when Greenlee and I thought Ryan had gotten killed crashing his motorcycle because I wanted Greenlee to have his baby. Only that wasn't the real reason. I wanted Ryan to live on somehow because I never stopped loving him."

Another uncomfortable silence ensued.

"And I blacked out Madden's fertility clinic, figuring you'd use your egg when Rylee's fertilized egg became unviable."

"So I wound up having Ryan's baby. And that's Spike."

Zach shook his head.

"You wound up having _my_ baby. And _that's_ Spike."

Kendall's head was swimming.

"No, Zach, our memories don't match. When you blacked out Madden's clinic, you didn't think I'd use my own egg. You thought I'd forget the whole thing. You never wanted me to carry Ryan's baby."

Zach nodded, every part of him convinced he was right. "You didn't carry Ryan's baby. Spike is my baby."

She was trying to make sense of what he was telling her and failing completely.

"We'll ask the Doctor," she said at last. "He'll help us sort it out."

"Doctor Who?" Zach asked.

"Exactly," Kendall answered.

------------------------

_Doctor Who? Oh, dear, another Guest Star! Will the Doctor help Zendall find the truth that's still somewhere out there? Time will tell, but I won't! See you next time!_


	12. Chapter 12

_Chapter Twelve –The Doctor Makes a Dream Call _

_Previously: Zendall sang to each other and by chance Kendall met Fox Mulder (THE Fox Mulder) who, after listening to a summary of her plight, advised her to visit the International UFO Convention going on in Zach's Casino and look up the Doctor (THE Doctor)! In their latest dream, Zen finds themselves aboard the USS Enterprise, where Kendall tells Zach about the Time Lord she hopes against hope will help them find each other and Spike in their waking lives._

--

"What Doctor?" Zach was demanding of Kendall, still in their dream, on board the Enterprise. "Please, Lovely, not Doctor Madden. He's dead! I should know! I heard his last tormented breath! Kendall, for pity's sake, don't bring that ghoul into our dream!"

Kendall kissed him squarely on the mouth and laughed lightly.

"No ghosts from the past, Handsome!" she assured him. "I've brought you nothing less than a certified, licensed Time Lord!"

As if on cue, there was a whirring sound all around them that Zach mistook for his alarm clock. Then he saw it. It wasn't his alarm clock. It was a telephone booth. When was the last time he saw a telephone booth? Before he could remember when, the door opened and a dapper young man somersaulted out and tipped his top hat.

"Zach, say hello to the Doctor. Doctor, please meet my husband, Zach Slater!"

My husband. The words came so easily to her.

"Charmed," the Doctor said in a lilting British accent, which Kendall thought was incredibly friendlier than Aidan's had been earlier that day when he kept her from seeing her world's version of Zach. "Kendall has briefly outlined your problem and asked for my help. And here I am."

Zach was speechless.

"To help you," the Doctor prompted.

"You're in our dream," Zach managed. "How could you be in our dream if you're real? If she's real? If any of this is real?"

"I'm real!" Kendall said emphatically. "And so is the Doctor. The only way he could see both of us at the same time was to be part of our dream. Zach, the Doctor is a Time Lord! He knows all about parallel universes and holes in time. Don't you, Doc?"

The Doctor laughed self-effacingly. "As much as anybody, I suppose."

Kendall could barely contain her excitement. "Zach, that telephone booth is really a time machine called the Tardis."

"Of course it is," Zach said, fairly certain that the love of his life had gone nuts. "And where on earth did you and the good Doctor meet?"

"At the International UFO Convention," Kendall answered, fairly certain the love of her life was wondering about her sanity or complete lack thereof. "Shall we go inside the Tardis, Doc? Is that how you'll get us back to the reality we originally came from?"

"Lovely, he's a loon," Zach thought sadly. "There are no such things as Time Lords."

"True enough," the Doctor admitted. "Except for me. I'm the last of my kind."

"Are you two having a private conversation?" Kendall asked, feeling left out and not liking it.

"The Doctor read my mind," Zach explained, concluding that was because he was nothing but a dream.

"Zach is of the opinion I was able to read his mind because I'm nothing but a dream," the Doctor informed Kendall. "Actually, that's not too far from the truth. When I'm awake I can't read minds all that well. Especially Rose's mind. You Earth Girls aren't easy."

"Who's Rose?" Kendall asked, to be polite.

"My Companion," the Doctor replied. "My 37th Companion, actually. If you count K-9."

"I think we should count K-9," Zach said, wanting more than anything to find himself and Kendall in a different dream.

"The Doctor is older than he looks," Kendall explained earnestly to Zach.

"Ah," Zach replied, as if he understood what she was talking about.

"I'm nine hundred years old," the Doctor said. "This is my ninth regeneration."

"Well that explains that," Zach said, looking at the floor and wishing he was back with Kendall in Sherwood Forest instead of on board the Enterprise wasting time with a nine hundred year-old crackpot who couldn't possibly exist.

"Zach wishes you and he were back in Sherwood Forest," the Doctor reported to Kendall. "He considers me a waste of time. And he thinks I don't exist. And he called me a crackpot."

"That about sums it up," Zach said to Kendall. "Let's get the hell out of here, Lovely!"

Which was when Lovely lost it.

"No!" she cried out with everything that was in her. "Zach, you need to believe the Doctor can help us! You need to believe _somebody _can help us! You need to believe we can be helped! Do it for me! Do it for Spike!"

The Doctor regarded the impassioned young woman with a benevolent smile. Such spirit! Such fire! Such loyalty! What a Companion she would be! The Doctor smiled ruefully, fully realizing his chances of wooing that particular Earth Girl away from that particular Earth Man were less than zero. "Ah, well," he thought.

"Zach," he said aloud, "I think Kendall is imploring you to make a Leap of Faith."

Kendall nodded vigorously, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, which didn't help any because she was still crying.

"Okay," Zach said, taking her into his arms, and gently rubbing her back until her sobbing quieted. "I'll believe whatever you want me to believe, Lovely. For you and for Spike. Okay?"

"Thank you," she thanked him, her tear-stained check resting on his shoulder.

"Can you tell what happened to us?" Zach asked the Doctor calmly. "How did we end up in two separate worlds?"

Out of thin air (after all, he was in a dream, so why use pockets?), the Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and scanned the pair.

"You have identical time signatures," he revealed, reading the results.

"I knew we belonged together!" Kendall exclaimed triumphantly, jumping out of Zach's embrace and doing a quick happy dance.

"But there's been a disruption in your life paths," the Doctor continued gravely. "Both of you have been ripped out of time."

That sounded serious.

"Accidentally?" Kendall asked.

"Intentionally?" Zach asked.

"Extremely intentionally," the Doctor answered. "By some villain or other. To find out who and how, you're going to have to go back together to a point just before the breach happened."

"Together?" they asked as one. "How?"

"Why don't we follow Kendall's suggestion, and use the Tardis? It really, truly is a time machine! Honest!"

"How are the three of us going to fit inside of a telephone booth?" Zach asked doubtfully.

"Zach, my friend, you've got to start thinking outside the box," the Doctor said as he led Zendall inside the Tardis, which it turned out was a great deal larger on the inside than it was on the outside.

"Who's your decorator?" Kendall cracked, as they climbed a winding orange velvet staircase which led to a ornate salon, even more bizarre than it was ornate. Velvet wall hangings studded with diamonds, sapphires and rubies hung crazily from every wall. Curtains, rugs, picture frames, _everything_ was in shades of purple and orange. "Babe Chandler?"

"The actual Tardis is a bit more subdued," he told them, having no idea or interest in whom Babe Chandler was. "Don't forget, we're in a dream."

"We know," Kendall said. "That's our problem. How do Zach and I wake up in each other's arms?"

The Doctor blushed.

"My wife means, how do we wake up in the same reality?" Zach rephrased. My wife. The words came so easily to him.

The Doctor smiled broadly. "As I was saying, the key to remedying any unwanted parallel universe crossover is to go back to a time right before the crossover occurred. And stop it from occurring."

"Vegas," Kendall said at once. "It had to have happened there. That why I don't remember meeting Zach Slater, although everybody tells me I did, including Zach." She noticed the Doctor's questioning look. "Not him. The other Zach. You know what I mean."

"I don't remember meeting Kendall in Las Vegas either," Zach said. "In my world, it was her sister who came with Ryan to look for her Mother. But in that other reality, we did meet there and we shared a life in Pine Valley way after that."

"I remember that life," Kendall affirmed. "At least, I'm beginning to remember it. But I still don't remember meeting you at your Vegas Casino. Do you remember that yet, Zach?"

Sadly, he shook his head no.

"You must have been programmed not to remember each other," the Doctor theorized.

A cold chill ran down Zendall's spines.

--

_Who could have programmed Zendall? And why? Can Doctor Who help Zendall find their way back to each other? Or will they need to get a second opinion? Please return for the next episode in this reality! Reviews are treasured (and answered)!_


	13. Chapter 13

_Chapter Thirteen – "Leaps of Faith"_

_Previously: Doctor Who appeared in Zendall's latest dream, offering to help them find each other and Spike. To restore them to the reality they were snatched away from by some villain or other, the Doctor has invited them aboard his time machine, the Tardis. Or, more accurately, a dream version of his time machine, the Tardis. The Doctor has told Zendall his theory that they had been programmed not to remember each other. _

--

A cold chill ran down Zendall's spines.

"In my opinion, the breach didn't necessarily happen in Las Vegas. Kendall, Las Vegas stands out in your mind because people have told you that you met Zach there, and you can't understand why you don't have that memory. But the reason is obvious. You've been expunged from each other's minds. The Kendall whose life you took over, did in fact meet Zach there. Since you were programmed to have no memories of Zach whatsoever, you couldn't remember that. But not remembering what everybody else around you remembered made you begin to question whether the dreams you were having were only dreams. So we know that whoever did this to you two is far from infallible. Which, in a situation like this, is always good to know."

"So in the realities we were sent into, we took over our characters' lives," Zach tried to understand. "They existed before we ever got there?"

The Doctor smiled. "And they will exist long after you two leave for your own reality. Of course, they may have a few gaps in their memory, depending upon how long you two led their lives."

A gigantic weight rolled off of Kendall's heart.

"So Ryan won't be alone when I leave him for Zach!" she concluded. "And Zach when you escape with me back into our reality, Dixie will have a version of you in her life to keep torturing!"

The Doctor, although perfectly enchanted with Kendall, got back to business.

"What's the last thing you two remember of your shared existence? Whatever it was, the breach must have happened then and there. Or shortly after then and there."

"We were buying a house," Kendall recalled. "But Zach didn't want it."

Zach nodded. "I remember that. But I don't remember why I didn't want it."

There was something else Kendall wanted the Doctor's view on. Desperately.

"In the world Zach and I shared, I've recently remembered that another man and I had a baby. But in Zach's recollection, he's Spike's father. Could that have anything to do with what happened to us?"

"Possibly," the Doctor said. "Is there any other anomaly in either of your memories?"

"I keep saying the same phrase again and again, day after day," Zach fully realized for the first time. "I have everything --"

"I've ever dreamed of," Kendall finished. "I say that all the time."

"Conditioning device," the Doctor told them. "Somebody implanted that thought in both of your minds as a memory block to keep you from suspecting the truth. Unless, of course, either of you in fact does have everything you ever dreamed of."

"Only when we're dreaming," Kendall answered.

"Only when we're dreaming," Zach affirmed. "About each other."

"And when did the dreams begin?" asked the Doctor.

"Weeks ago," Kendall replied. "I think it was weeks ago. At first, I couldn't remember the dreams when I woke up. At least not completely. But night after night, dream after dream, I began recalling more of it the next morning."

"And then we began remembering the reality we once shared," Zach continued.

The Doctor nodded in understanding. "The conditioning has been wearing off. That's why you began dreaming of each other in the first place. Although that you actually meet each other in dreams astounds me! Tell me, how did you come to suspect you were having identical dreams and that you each existed outside of those dreams?"

Kendall was sure of when that had happened. "One night after I woke up, Zach was outside of my window. He had followed me out of his dream."

"I wasn't there long," Zach confirmed. "But I was there."

The Doctor was fascinated. "Apparently, you two have such an indestructible bond, you can spontaneously bridge dimensions of time and space in order to be together. I personally have never encountered such a thing, and believe you me there's precious little I haven't encountered in my nine hundred years. You two have a remarkable connection!"

Kendall giggled and Zach grinned.

"Hey Handsome, what do you know? We're unique!"

"Right then, we're all set," the Doctor said, leading the way to the Tardis' control module, which in the dream greatly resembled a huge purple and orange remote control. "All I need to do is set the Tardis' coordinates to match your time signatures which I've recorded here on my sonic screwdriver, and whoosh you're back home to the point directly before you were snatched away, which according to you would be when you were looking at the house Zach didn't want. Child's play."

Kendall had some difficulty with that concept. "But we're not actually in your time machine. We're in a dream of your time machine. How can we be wooshed to our real reality?"

"Now who's having trouble believing?" Zach asked archly.

"It's a legitimate point," the Doctor said in all fairness. "But Kendall, if this weren't a dream, how could you take over the lives of your counterparts? You're going back into your pasts, just before the breach, where both of you already exist."

Zendall exchanged glances.

"How can we do that?" she asked. "How can that happen?"

The Doctor was too busy setting controls to answer immediately.

"Doctor," Zach repeated, "How can we enter a world we're already living in?"

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the dials and looked up, a blissful expression on is face. "You'll simply wake up, dear hearts. You'll simply wake up!"

At which point, the Doctor pressed "SELECT", and a wave of sound that can only be described as a WHOOSH rocked the Tardis, throwing them all off balance.

"Doctor, are you positive that Zach and I will wake up together?" Kendall asked for the both of them, as they hung onto each other for dear life while the Tardis shook, rattled and rolled. "In the same world? In _our_ Pine Valley? With _our_ Spike?"

The Doctor, hugging his control panel and, still checking his gauges and monitors, nodded absently. "Absolutely certain. In all likelihood, you'll be in the same reality."

Kendall blinked. "In all likelihood?" she repeated hollowly.

"What happened to absolutely certain?" Zach demanded.

The Doctor had a question of his own.

"What happened to Leaps of Faith?"

Zendall hung onto each other as the Tardis continued to pitch. "Wherever we wind up, we can still have our dreams," Kendall said solemnly to her soul mate, who quickly nodded in agreement and held her even tighter.

"Not so sure about that," the Doctor said, comparing the readings on his sonic screwdriver with the time coordinates he had set. "If you two don't wake up in the same reality, you may forget you ever knew each other."

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US THAT BEFORE YOU –?"

--

Kendall woke up in her own bed, in her own bedroom, in her own condo. Nobody was lying next to her, but that side of the bed definitely looked slept in.

"Who's been sleeping in my bed?" she asked herself idly.

Somebody was showering, the sound of the water must have been what woke her, she thought dully. Then she remembered. Then she panicked. "Doctor, please! Please don't have gotten this wrong!" What reality had she landed in? Who was in her bathroom? Zach? Ryan?

"Sweetheart, are you up yet?" came a booming male voice from the bathroom.

"More or less," Kendall answered, forcing her mouth to move. Who the hell's voice was that? It sounded familiar, but -- She heard footsteps padding her way and hardly had time to pray it was Zach before somebody ran in from the bathroom, threw off a bath towel and jumped into her bed.

"Morning, sleepyhead," JR greeted her happily. "Hungry?"

--

_Uh-oh. Looks like Kendall didn't awaken in the same reality she was snatched away from. What reality is Zach in? Can they still at least dream of one another? Please come back again for the next thrilling installment when more questions will be asked than answered! You know. Like always!_


	14. Chapter 14

_Chapter Fourteen – "Wooshed Away"_

_Previously – Doctor Who has attempted to put Zendall back into the reality that they originally came from. The key word here is "attempted" for something appears to have gone dreadfully wrong._

------------------------

Kendall sank into her chair and stared resentfully at the unopened menu before her. She and JR were having brunch at the Valley Inn, but she was even less hungry than usual.

"French toast?" JR attempted to tempt her. "Come on, honey. You've got to eat!"

"Honey has got to do one thing and one thing only," she thought darkly. "Find Doctor Who and kill him in cold blood."

The day had not gone well for Kendall. She had awoken, fully expecting to find the love of her life on the pillow right next to her and their baby cooing in the nursery. But Zach and Spike were nowhere in sight. Instead she found out she was Mrs. Adam Chandler, Jr. "That Extraterrestrial Idiot put me in the wrong reality," she thought for the thousandth time that day. "Not even the wrong reality I was used to. This is a whole different wrong reality. Zach was right about that lunatic Doctor. I should have listened. Omigod, Zach! I wonder what reality that monster shoved Zach into!"

"At least drink some orange juice," JR cajoled.

"Get stuffed," she thought, remembering how his attempt on Babe's life had landed her (Kendall) in Intensive Care a few months back. That was in the other reality, her _true_ reality, wasn't it? Zach had saved her and Spike then, almost getting himself killed in the process. He had barricaded her hospital room and he wouldn't let them deliver Spike before he was ready to be born. Omigod, Spike!

"Kendall, look at me," JR asked of her. "This can't go on!"

"You got _that_ right," she thought, keeping her eyes downcast.

"I loved Spike too!" JR said brokenly. "Anyway, I would have loved him. I wasn't even going to ask for a DNA test!"

Tears refilled Kendall's eyes.

She had stumbled into the nursery that morning looking for her baby. There was the crib she remembered from her true reality. But it was empty. So empty. Why was the crib empty?

"Where's Spike?" she had screamed hysterically. But JR only held her while she hit his chest with her fists and said nothing, leaving her to think the worst.

"I won't let you give up on life!" JR was telling her now. "And neither will Erica! Oh, good! There she is now! Erica! Erica! Over here!"

Without raising her head, Kendall sensed her Mother's presence, as she and her companion sat down at their table.

"How is she doing?" Erica asked JR, as if Kendall wasn't there.

"She was looking for sleeping pills this morning," JR reported, as if Kendall wasn't there. "Right after she went into the empty nursery."

"Damn right I was looking for sleeping pills," Kendall thought miserably. "I couldn't even find a freakin' aspirin!" She knew that somehow she had to steady herself. "Spike is alive and well somewhere. Zach is alive and well somewhere. All I need to do is to find out where that somewhere is and get myself there as fast as humanly possible." Despite her mounting panic and despair, she continued talking herself down. "If I fall apart, I won't be able to do anything to help myself out of this hell. When I go to sleep, Zach will be in my dream, and we'll figure a way out of this. Until then I've got to stay strong." Easier said than done. Especially since Doctor Who had warned them that if they accidentally wound up in separate realities, they might not be able to meet anymore in their dreams.

"Kendall, you must snap out of this!" Erica cried out, shaking her without touching her, as only she could. "Zach, tell her!"

Slowly, Kendall raised her eyes. Zach Slater was sitting next to Erica, a tormented look on his face. Was that only because he was with Erica, or was there a better reason?

"You are so perfect," she thought, missing her own Zach even more as she gazed longingly at this reality's Zach Slater. "You're so everything. I have probably loved the real version of you since before I was born. Seeing you now, sitting across from me, looking exactly like him, is like dying. You've got his hair and eyes and his nose and his mouth. You've got his body. You've got his expression of rueful world-weariness. But who the hell are you, and where the hell is he?"

For his part, Zach tried to find differences between this Kendall and his Kendall. Same features, same build. But the fire had gone out of this woman. He was looking at only the shell of his one and only love. "Damn you, Doctor Who!" he thought bitterly. What had that maniac done to them? Where was she?

When he had awakened and begun to understand the nature of this new, horrific reality, Erica had only been too willing to fill him in on what her older daughter was going through. She had lost Spike, and there was no setting that right. Hearing those words from Erica had nearly killed Zach on the spot. Then Erica had told him the rest of it, assuming, of course, that he already knew, which of course he didn't. According to Erica, Kendall had never really been pregnant, although she had named the baby she thought she was carrying and began furnishing a nursery for him. Erica couldn't begin to understand why her daughter had done that or why she had mourned for him so intensely when Dr. Madden told her it was a false pregnancy. But Zach understood. In any reality, any Kendall's love for any Spike would shine through. What agony this Kendall must be going through! Pity for this lovely stranger filled his entire being. He knew that if this Kendall was anything like his Kendall nothing he could say to her would make any difference.

"You've got to take care of yourself, Kendall," he nevertheless told her, meaning it.

"Why?" she asked him, her voice so filled with sheer agony, it went straight to his already shattered heart. "What difference does it make now? What difference does _anything_ make now?"

At his wit's end, he ran his hand through his hair, as if doing that could help him come up with the right thing to say.

"I dunno," he admitted finally. "Something good might happen. It can't be midnight forever!"

He didn't sound convinced of that, however, which struck Kendall as odd.

"Coffee?" the waiter asked innocently.

"NO!" Zach and Kendall cried out in unison and with such vehemence that Erica and JR exchanged shocked glances.

"I – I haven't been sleeping too well lately, "Kendall explained haltingly, desperately trying to read Zach's troubled face. "And I need to sleep more than I need to breathe."

"Why, Kendall?" he asked her, afraid to hope what he was hoping.

She knew the answer. The only answer.

"Because I need to dream."

He nodded slowly, his eyes becoming less tragic with every passing moment. "I need to dream too."

"Dreams are good," Erica opined brightly, keeping up her end of the conversation.

"What do you dream about, Kendall?" Zach asked tensely, looking only at her.

"The man I love," she replied, her gaze never wavering from his. "The man I have always loved. The man I will love throughout all eternity."

"That's my girl!" JR laughed a little too hard. "See that Erica? I'm even in my wife's dreams!"

"His wife?" Zach soundlessly mouthed to Kendall.

"Well, I should hope I'm in my husband's dreams as well!" Erica said, squeezing Zach's arm.

"Her husband?" Kendall soundlessly mouthed to Zach.

"Excuse me, I need to wash my hands," Zach said, abruptly getting up from the table.

"Excuse me, I need to freshen up," Kendall said, abruptly getting up from the table.

They casually walked off in separate directions, circled back and met each other in the lobby.

"Is it you? Is it really you?" they both asked each other.

"YES!" they both answered.

Not bothering to look around at who else happened to be in the Valley Inn's lobby, Zach swept Kendall off her feet, kissed her soundly and carried her to the front desk.

"We need a room," Zach told the desk clerk. "Now."

"Zach," Kendall whispered to him, "I don't think that's such a good idea. My Mother and JR are right back there in the dining room. We can't --"

"Sure we can. She isn't your Mother, and that's isn't JR. This isn't our reality. Or even the reality we just left. This is a colossal screw-up."

"Put me down. I mean it. I adore you, but I mean it!"

He kissed her soundly again and then did as he was ordered. She then took his hand firmly in her own, led him to a couch in the lobby and yanked him down so he was sitting next to her.

"Zach," she said seriously, "this is the reality we woke up to. We've got to deal with that."

He couldn't agree more.

"Let's start dealing with it upstairs," he suggested, pulling her onto his lap.

She laughed for the first time that day. "Believe me, I'd love to, but we need to talk, and I don't know how long we have before our better halves hunt us down." She grew pensive and sad. "Zach, I lost Spike. Did Erica tell you that?"

He couldn't talk fast enough. "You didn't lose Spike. You never had Spike. You had a false pregnancy and went over the edge when you found out you weren't going to have Junior's heir."

Kendall couldn't take that in immediately. "Man, I'm even more messed up here than I was in the other realities!"

Zach would not let that go unchallenged. "You are not messed up, Lovely. You are completely the opposite of messed up. The only thing you've been lacking lately is me."

"And Spike," she added, her voice catching in her throat. "Zach, we've got to find a way back to our true reality! We can't go on living without our baby!"

"Look, Spike hasn't been born yet," he felt compelled to point out. "Let's go upstairs and do our best to remedy that. Who knows? Nine months from now we could produce a brand new bouncing Spike. Spike Slater!"

Did he sound like he wanted to stay in this colossal screw-up of a reality without even trying to escape?

"This isn't the place for us," she said, in case he was entertaining any thought that it was. "Zach, you're married to my Mother. How can we ever be together here?"

He shrugged. "This is Pine Valley. I bet in this reality marriages come and go as easily as they do in ours. Besides, I took you away from my Son, so it's only fair that you take me away from your Mother. It kind of evens things out."

"That isn't remotely funny," she sighed, reluctantly getting off of his lap and standing up. "And what about my husband? You know what an ugly temper JR has!"

Zach grinned, standing up also. "Ah, yes, Junior's temper. Let's think back. Why did I let him live after he arranged for a construction site to fall on your head?"

Kendall remembered. "Dixie begged you not to kill him. And, not for nothing, he wasn't trying to kill me. He was after Babe. His wife. See any pattern there? Anyway it was stupid Dixie who saved his stupid life."

Zach nodded. "And do you see Dixie anywhere in this reality?"

"Not so far," Kendall allowed. "But anybody we ever knew could show up, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

At that very moment, Kendall noticed that Zach was looking at somebody over her shoulder. There was an expression of stunned joy on his face that Kendall only understood when she turned around. Ethan was walking into the Valley Inn, smiling and waving at Zach. His Father.

------------------------

_Oh, my! Ethan isn't dead in this new reality! Will that be enough to keep Zendall from searching for the way home? Time will tell, but I won't! Yet! Please return for the next thrilling episode, and in the meantime, please review this thrilling episode!_


	15. Chapter 15

_Chapter Fifteen – "It Can't Always Be Midnight"_

_Previously – Zendall awakes in a brand new reality, where Zach is married to Erica and Kendall is married to JR. Shortly after they realize they are no longer in separate waking lives, Zach's son Ethan walks into the Valley Inn, which wouldn't be remarkable if Ethan hadn't been dead and buried in all of Zach's prior realities. But he had been._

------------------------

Zach stared in utter disbelieve as Ethan strided over to him, a big friendly grin all over his face.

"Dad! Where have you been? We haven't seen each other in ages!"

Kendall nearly fainted with surprise. Ethan alive!

"Oh, Ethan, it's so fantastic to see you again!" she cried out, running to him and throwing her arms around him.

He laughed, returning the hug as he continued smiling at Zach..

"Hey, be careful! You know how jealous JR is! You and I have a history, remember? Well, I know I'll always remember."

Kendall sniffed and kissed him on the check.

"I'm just so happy to see you." She walked back to Zach. "We're both so happy!"

"You too, Dad?" Ethan asked a little uncertainly, given his Father's continued silence.

Zach tried to speak. Failed. Tried again and succeeded. Sort of.

"How -- How have you been, Son?"

"Ducky," Ethan laughed. "How have _you_ been? How was France?"

"France was good," Zach played along. "France is almost always good."

"Particularly on your honeymoon," Ethan said, with a glint in his eye.

"Particularly," Zach agreed for absolutely no reason at all.

"I must be the only one in Pine Valley who never went to Paris on a honeymoon," Kendall mused.

"Really?" Ethan asked. "I thought JR gave you the Grand Tour!"

Zach couldn't get over it. Happily, he had regained the power of speech.

"How are you, Son?" he wanted to know. "Do you need anything?"

"Who me?" Ethan chuckled. "I have everything I've ever –"

"Dreamed of?" Zach and Kendall asked together

"I was going to say 'wished for'," Ethan told them, a trifle uneasily. "Is there anything the matter, Dad? Are you okay? Where's Erica?"

"Here!" Erica answered, strutting in from the dining room, arm-in-arm with her son-in-law. "Zach, why didn't you and Kendall come back to us? We were getting worried!"

JR nodded in agreement. He looked as if he were still worried.

"We got lost," Kendall replied honestly. "A couple of times."

"And then they found me!" Ethan added, having no notion of how right he was. "Or, actually, I found them!" He studied the faces around him, still feeling all was not right with his family, but unable to put his finger on it. "I'm meeting Simone here for lunch. Mind if I wait with you guys or have you finished eating already?"

"Erica never eats," Zach said matter-of-factly, still in shock over his son's rebirth.

"Which means you're just in time to join us!" Kendall covered smoothly. "Come on inside, Ethan! I don't eat either, so there are scads of bagels and muffins going to waste!"

"Please, Son," Zach entreated him with a passion Ethan couldn't begin to fathom. "Sit with us!"

For their parts, Erica and JR were astounded at Kendall's mood change. She seemed to them suddenly, mysteriously _vibrant._

"Kendall, are you all right?" a bewildered Erica checked.

"Right as rain," Kendall laughed, linking arms with Zach and Ethan and heading back to the dining room. "How you doin', Step-Daddy?"

"Can't complain!" Zach said, grateful for once not to be dreaming.

Brunch continued with Zach staring at his son and real wife in utter contentment, Erica and JR exchanging concerned glances from time to time, Kendall not eating much and, of course, Erica not eating at all.

Ethan found his Father's behavior more than slightly disconcerting. "Something's out of whack," he thought. "Dad seems dazed. The honeymoon is probably not over yet, so like as not he isn't getting much sleep, but there's something else going on. When he isn't looking at me, he's looking at Kendall. What's with that? He can't stand Kendall! And he doesn't look at his wife, even when she's speaking. Kendall isn't looking at JR either. She looks happy though. Blissful, even. JR looks anything but. What could have happened before I got here?"

"Can I get your order?" the young, blonde waitress was asking Ethan.

"I'm waiting for someone," Ethan replied politely. "We'll order when she get here."

"Whatever," the waitress said, sauntering back to the kitchen as Kendall looked at her for the first time.

"WOW!" Kendall yelped, nearly tipping over her water glass. "Zach, did you see who our waitress is?"

Zach had indeed seen who their waitress was. "Her name tag says 'Babe'. Pretty, isn't she, JR?"

JR shrugged. "I only have eyes for my wife."

"Me too," Zach said.

Erica smiled and flipped her hair.

"Isn't marriage to the absolutely right person absolutely wonderful? You'll know that for yourself soon enough, Ethan! Simone is so lucky to have you in her life!"

Zach and Kendall nodded.

"So are we," they said.

Not too long after that Simone came in and, after kissing Ethan hello and smiling shyly at everybody, she and Ethan left for their own table.

"I'll call you later, Dad," Ethan told Zach before he followed his fiancée to another part of the dining room. "Today."

"Good!" Zach exclaimed. "Great! I'll be home all afternoon!"

Which brought a logical question to Kendall's mind.

"Exactly where are you and Zach living, Mother?"

Erica looked puzzled. "We're in Zach's penthouse until the new mansion is finished," she answered. "But you knew that already, Kendall!"

"Yes, I did," Kendall affirmed quickly. "You mean, Zach's penthouse at the Casino?"

"What casino?" Erica asked, completely perplexed.

"_Ryan's_ penthouse," Zach told Kendall.

"Who's Ryan?" JR asked.

"Former owner," Zach explained without missing a beat.

"You're _good_!" Kendall marveled, which puzzled and perplexed Erica even more.

When brunch ended at long last, everyone made their way out to the parking lot, where Zach and Erica said their goodbyes to Kendall and JR.

"She's still not herself," Erica murmured in JR's ear.

"See you tonight, Lovely," Zach murmured in Kendall's ear.

"At least she seems happier," JR murmured in Erica's ear. "Lots happier."

"See me how?" Kendall murmured in Zach's ear. "What if we can't meet in dreams anymore?"

Zach thought that through.

"Then we'll meet at the Pine Cone," he decided.

------------------------

_Now that he's been reunited with his son, will Zach want to remain in this reality or continue to search for the way home? Can Kendall accept never seeing Spike again? Can Zach? Will Erica ever have at least a snack? Please return for our next episode wherein these and many other questions of metaphysical import will be dealt with, if not fully resolved. Always love to read your reviews!_


	16. Chapter 16

_Chapter Sixteen – An Unanticipated Complication_

_Previously – Accidentally plunked down into a Pine Valley that wasn't their own, Zendall began to deal with their new reality, which included Ethan among the living, Zach married to Erica, and Kendall married to JR.. As well as other scary things still unknown to them._

------------------------

Adam Chandler had a headache. He had quarreled with his wife, Brooke, but that hadn't cheered him up as much as it usually did. Kendall Hart Chandler was why his head was splitting. His gorgeous and neurotic daughter-in-law was seriously getting on his nerves. He had never been for that marriage. How could any daughter of Erica Kane be suitable for his Son and Heir to Everything Chandler? As usual, JR hadn't listened to reason and had eloped with the woman. Woman. How much older was she than his son? Ten years? Fifteen?

"Age is only a number, Dad," his son had told him cheerfully.

"I know, but she's crazy as well, son. Don't forget that. It's in the genes. The Kane Curse. All of them are bananas."

But at the time, JR only waved away his Father's counsel, which led directly to the present dismal state of affairs. His only son was stuck with a wife who mourned an imaginary baby to a degree that made her absolutely useless as well as flat-out depressing to be around.

"Adam!" she greeted him now in a voice so chock full of glee, he was certain he was hearing things. "Hi! Long time no see!"

"Kendall?" he asked incredulously, turning to see her and JR enter Casa Chandler. She was almost jumping for joy. JR seemed somewhat more subdued.

"Who have you been putting on the rack lately, you old villain?" she laughed, playfully poking him in the ribs.

"What's wrong with you?" Adam demanded. "I mean, what's _right_ with you?"

"Nearly everything," she estimated. "I have fifty percent of everything I need to be happy, and that's fifty percent more than I had this time yesterday. You do the math."

Adam shot a look at his son, who looked miserable.

"I have no idea what she's talking about," JR whispered in Adam's ear. "I brought her here instead of back to the Condo because I'm afraid to go to work and leave her alone. She's been like this since brunch."

"Well, it couldn't have been something she ate," Adam analyzed, fully aware of Kendall's and Erica's penchant for a non-food existence.

Kendall was smiling from ear to ear.. "While you two talk me over, methinks I'll take myself out for a walk. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!"

JR gasped. "Kendall, you haven't been out for a walk by yourself since Spike --" He stopped himself from saying the rest.

"Since Spike became a false alarm," she finished for him, uncharacteristically dry-eyed. "Well, it's about time I did! See ya!"

And saying no more, Kendall flung open the door and marched outside in the general direction of the Pine Cone where she planned to wait for Zach.

"Did you have the commitment papers drawn up yet?" JR asked Adam as soon as Kendall was out of sight and out of earshot.

Adam patted his pocket. "Right here, son. She'll be locked away in Oak Haven by this time tomorrow. And you'll be free."

"Locked away at Oak Haven!" JR cried out in agony, remembering that years before his late Mother had shared the same awful fate at Adam's hands.

"I mean, she'll be _helped_ at Oak Haven," Adam corrected himself. "It's for the best, Son. Trust me."

------------------------

Zach was fully prepared to drop Erica off at the Penthouse and go meet Kendall at the Pine Cone, when the phone rang.

"It's Ethan," Erica said. "Darling, I must say, I wish I were as close to my daughters are you are to your son!"

Zach grabbed the receiver from her with a goofy grin that mystified her.

"Dad, is everything okay with you and Erica?" Ethan inquired hesitantly, right after Zach said "hello".

"We're golden," Zach replied immediately. "When's your wedding?"

"We haven't set the date," Ethan said, wondering why that had slipped Zach's mind.

"You need to set it," Zach told him at once. "Things change with no warning. Delay can be deadly." He was sorry he had said that. "Delay can be …not so good."

Ethan tried to keep the mounting anxiety out of his voice. "You'll be there, right Dad? You wouldn't miss my wedding!"

"Not for the world," he assured him. "But maybe for Kendall," he realized, with a suddenly sinking heart.

------------------------

Erica arrived at Casa Chandler no more than an hour after Kendall left for the Pine Cone. She had guessed correctly that JR wouldn't take Kendall back to their Condo. Not JR. His motto had always been "when in trouble, run home to Daddy". Since Adam was always up to no good, she was fairly certain that Kendall needed her help. Wasn't that the reason she and Zach had hurried back from Paris? But there was another reason for the visit. Kendall had been so strange at brunch. First so deflated, then so elated. It didn't make sense, and if her daughter was about to spiral out of control, Erica had to be there to protect her from the vipers who surrounded her. JR loved Kendall of course. But JR had never been good at standing up to Adam, and Adam had been against the marriage from the start. And, needless to say, Brooke wouldn't care what happened to Kendall. That was a given. Erica had wanted her husband there for moral support, but Zach couldn't seem to get off the phone with Ethan. That was odd. But Zach had been acting oddly at the Valley Inn as well, hadn't he? Deflated then elated, just like Kendall. Erica sighed. Her greatest wish was for Zach and Kendall to get along, but the pair hated each other with a fury that Erica had never understood. Only not at brunch. They seemed amazingly in sync at brunch. What was that about? Erica was determined to find out as she rang the bell.

"Your crazy daughter has gone out for a walk," Adam greeted her coldly.

"I'll wait," Erica stiffly informed the man she had been married to for twenty years and who had left her the year before for her archenemy, Brooke English.

------------------------

Kendall spent her afternoon alone in a seedy motel room, waiting for Zach and thinking things through. She carefully weighed the positives and negatives of this unexpected turn of realities.

"On the plus side, I'm in the same waking life as my husband," she said to herself. "My real husband. We're still young and healthy. We know each other and are starting to remember more and more of our true reality." Our _true_ reality. Those words made her breathe deeply before she proceeded to the negatives. "Spike isn't here. We're married to different people. I'm married to JR, which means my life is probably in danger, and Zach is married to my Mother, which is worse. And Spike isn't here." But Ethan was there. That mattered to Zach, she knew. Hell, it mattered to her too. A world with Ethan in it was infinitely better than a world without Ethan. But Spike wasn't there.

From the seedy bed, she looked around the seedy motel room. It was a far cry from Rick's Place in Casablanca or Tara or Sherwood Forest. But it was real. She was awake. And she knew this place. It was the room she had lived in once upon a time. Ryan had been in the next cabin over and they first met when he crashed through her door, loudly complaining about the eardrum-shattering volume of her radio. She couldn't help but smile at the memory. Ryan. Not the Ryan she had been married to in that other reality and who bored her to tears. _Her_ Ryan. The Ryan who had run out on her too many times to remember, although she was remembering more and more lately. She frowned. Ryan was missing from this reality. "Who else isn't here?" she wondered. "Bianca? Miranda? Josh? Lily?" Anybody else she once loved and held near to her?

There was a soft knock at the door. Too early for Zach. He said they'd meet that night. Who could it be? Who knew she was there? Had JR followed her? Or Adam?

"That better not be the Doctor," she grumbled, scrambling to the seedy door. She was still furious at the Timelord for miscalculating the coordinates and putting Zendall in the wrong Pine Valley. Most of her wished their paths would never cross again.

"I couldn't wait till tonight to see you, Angel!" the man at the door whispered hoarsely, gathering her into his arms.

"Hi, Ethan," she managed.

------------------------

_Hmm.. Kendall and Ethan? Stranger things have happened and will continue to happen in our next fun-packed episode! Will Zach learn the awful truth? Will Kendall face commitment issues? Please tune in next week! Your Review would be appreciated like nobody's business! (Does anybody but me still say that?)_


	17. Chapter 17

_Chapter Seventeen –"So Near and Yet So Far"_

_Previously – Ethan showed up at the Pine Cone to meet Kendall before Zach got there. Obviously, in this reality, not only is Ethan alive and well, but so is Kethan! _

--

Kendall did everything she knew how to do to get Ethan out of her seedy motel room before his Father arrived for their rendezvous. Obviously, Ethan and the Kendall of this reality had something between them. But that was literally none of her affair. Omigod, how could she ever break the news to Zach? Keeping it from him was unthinkable. Actually, it was one more reason to get back to their own reality, if they could. Only, of course, Zach might not see it that way. Ethan was alive in _this_ reality. And he might remind her she had dumped Ethan once before for him. So why not twice? "No way," she thought. No way would they live through that horror again! She'd tell that to Zach after she told him Ethan was in love with her. But first she had to get rid of Ethan. Nicely, of course.

"Ethan, I'm exhausted," she began.

"Of course you are, Angel!" he commiserated, not taking the hint. "Waking up every blessed morning next to that nightmare of a husband! How could you _not_ be exhausted? He must sap every single ounce of energy out of you! Poor baby!"

"And I have a headache," she continued, remembering all the lines she had successfully used on Ryan in her last reality.

"Ah," he smiled, "I have a cure for that!" He kissed her tenderly on the forehead, confident that would do the trick.

"What about Simone?" she cried out in response to the kiss. "You two are engaged to be _married_ for pity's sake! Doesn't that count for anything anymore in this town?"

He gave her a funny look. "You above all should know why I asked Simone to marry me," he said stiffly, backing away from her.

"Should I?" she asked, really wanting to know.

"I didn't tell you to throw yourself away on JR!" he said bitterly. "Losing you to Chandler wasn't my idea of a good time!"

"Aha!" she saw. "I married JR, so you got engaged to Simone to get back at me. That sounds familiar." Too familiar. It appeared that this reality and her true reality weren't so different. Zach was right. Pine Valley was Pine Valley.

"I was a fool," Ethan sighed, clasping her head to his chest. "But you saw right through me! You knew we couldn't stay apart!"

She pushed away from him as gently as she could.

"It won't work, Ethan," she began again. "JR is insanely jealous. And smart! And suspicious! We can't be together without him finding out."

Ethan looked confused again. "We've been meeting here for two years and he hasn't found out yet," he said to her. "Neither has Simone!"

--

Erica got back to the Penthouse just as Zach was leaving.

"Kendall is missing!" she greeted him. "Adam said she went out for a walk and never came back!"

"Fancy that," Zach commented innocently.

Erica flipped her hair, and not in a good way. "Look, Zach, I know that you and Kendall have never gotten on. But for my sake, please show a little concern over her disappearance! She could be anywhere!"

Zach knew exactly where Kendall was and exactly whom she was waiting for. And he had no intention of being late.

"Erica, I can't help you with this," he told her kindly but firmly. "Not that I wouldn't if I could. But sadly, I can't."

"Why can't you?"

"I've got to go out."

Erica didn't take that news too well.

"Out?" she gasped. "Out? I'm in a crisis of monumental proportions and you have to go out? My daughter is missing and you have to go out?"

Being a gambler, Zach quickly calculated the odds of making a run for it and getting away before Erica tackled him. He decided he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

"Duty calls," he attempted to pacify her, as he edged toward the door.

"Duty?" she yelled. "What duty? You're an out-of-work actor, for pity's sake!"

"That's not a good thing to be in any reality," he reflected ruefully.

"Zach, where on earth would you possibly want to go?"

"Straight to my beloved's embrace," he thought happily, having absolutely no intention of saying that out loud. Actually, he had no idea what he _could_ safely say out loud. Then inspiration struck.

He put his arms on Erica's slender shoulders, as if to brace her for the revelation he was about to make.

"I'm a spy, Erica," he told her quietly.

"You're not a spy," she told him loudly.

"Yes, I am," he disagreed. "And I'm on a secret mission. I've got to meet my contact tonight. The fate of the whole wide world depends on it."

Erica's eyes narrowed.

"Why should I believe you?" she asked.

"Have I ever lied to you?" he answered, having no idea if he ever had.

That was an easy one for Erica.

"Of course you've lied to me," she exploded, throwing his arms off her shoulders and stamping her foot for emphasis.. "If you're a spy, and I never knew you were a spy, then by definition you've lied to me!"

"I had to keep my other life a secret from you," he told her, continuing to make it up as he went along. "To protect you. How could I ever put you and our life together in jeopardy?" At this point, he realized he'd say anything to get out of there so he could get to Kendall.

Erica demeanor changed from livid to wistful. "I was engaged to a spy once. He died in my arms."

"I'm sorry, Erica," Zach said, meaning it.

"But he wasn't really dead," she continued "and years later when he came back to me, he broke up my engagement to Jack Montgomery. And then he went away again." Wistful was replaced by vulnerable. "And then Jack went away. Forever."

"I'm sorry, Erica," Zach repeated.

So Jackson Montgomery never got to become Mr. Erica Kane. "I need a scorecard in this reality," Zach noted to himself. "Who's here, who's gone. Who was never born." Ethan was here and Spike had never been born. Zach felt a surge of happiness mixed with a longing so strong that it nearly knocked him over. He missed Spike with everything that was in him. But Ethan was alive, he reminded himself. And nine months from now Spike would be alive.

"Whose side do you work for?" Erica was demanding, beginning to believe the unbelievable.

"Our side," he assured her.

"That's good," she said. "I'm glad you're working for our side."

He kissed her on the cheek.

"Don't wait up for me!"

"Zach, be careful!" she yelled after his rapidly retreating figure. "I don't look good in black!"

"Yes, you do," he called over his shoulder. "Erica Kane looks good in everything!

--

"Ethan, I mean it. You have to leave. Now. Right now. I'm not fooling around. We're not fooling around. There isn't going to be any fooling around in this room. Between you and me, I mean."

Kendall's mood astonished Ethan as much as it upset him. She had never rejected his advances before. Not even when she was on her honeymoon in Paris and he had shown up in her bridal suite while JR was out taking care of some idiotic Chandler business. What had gotten into her? Could she still be depressed because Spike hadn't been real? But she had seemed fine at brunch. More than fine. Which brought another question to Ethan's mind. When did she and Zach start getting along so well? They could never stand each other. What had changed between them?

Ethan's musings were interrupted by Kendall, who had just had an extremely unhappy thought.

"Ethan," she was asking, "did we think Spike was your son?"

--

Zach walked to the Pine Cone at a surprisingly leisurely pace. He was anxious to get to Kendall, of course, but he felt grateful to have some time alone to process all that had happened to him since he awoke that morning in, of all places, Erica Kane's bed.

Erica Kane's bed. That was something to process. But that had been the least of it. His son, Ethan, was alive and well in this reality. He had never thought he'd see him again on this side of Heaven or (in his case, he was sure) Hell. But there he was at the Valley Inn. Big as life. And Ethan loved him. Zach was certain he wasn't imagining things. The son who never forgave him for denying him, who died refusing to forgive him, actually _loved_ him in this crazy Pine Valley. But odds were that Kendall wanted them to find their way home somehow. She needed to get back to Spike, _her_ son. "My son too," Zach thought. "Although I don't know how he could be. I caused the blackout, Greenlee's fertilized eggs went bad and Madden used what was left of Ryan's donation to impregnate Kendall. I can remember all of that happening. So where did I shine in?" And yet Zach knew, he _knew_ he was Spike's father. And he knew something else. If he left with Kendall in search of their true reality (if they could even do that) he would be denying Ethan once again. For the last time.

--

_Will Zendall ever get together in that seedy motel room? Will Zach agree to leave this reality? Will Kendall agree to stay? How could they get home even if they wanted to do that? These and even more questions will be grappled with in our next spine-tingling episode!_


	18. Chapter 18

_Chapter Eighteen – "Wide Awake Zendall"_

_Previously: Zach and Kendall were too tangled in their new reality to meet each other at the Pine Cone. That is about to change, however…_

------------------------

Kendall knew she was in a dream, even before she saw Zach. It _felt_ to her like a dream. Nowhere were the sharp edges of reality cutting her perceptions. Besides, they were back on board the Enterprise, and that kind of gave things away.

"So we can still meet in dreams," Zach observed, hugging her to him.

"That's probably because we're not back in our true reality," she ventured.

"And also because you haven't solved the Mystery," Captain Kirk added. "Somebody or something ripped you two kids out of time, and excuse me for saying so, but you don't seemed too worked up over that."

"Mind your own stupid business," Zach told him.

"Jim, I don't think you're being fair," Spock intervened. "Zendall is doing the only logical thing they can do. They are staying together and waiting for whoever did this to them to do it to them again."

"Too passive," Captain Kirk opined. "Too passive by half."

"I liked Picard better," Zach shot back.

"I liked Ryan better," Captain Kirk retaliated.

"Kendall, wake up, you're dreaming!" Doctor Who called to her from the doorway of the Tardis.

"Of course I'm dreaming!" Kendall replied. "Zach and I are --" She turned toward Zach, but he wasn't standing next to her anymore. In his place, stood a six-foot lobster. Understandably frightened, she ran toward the Doctor. "Where's Zach? What have you done with my husband?"

Once again the Doctor found himself admiring her loyalty and courage. What fire that girl had! "Your husband is about to knock at your seedy door at the Pine Cone," he made haste to assure her. But then he told her more. "The thing is, I'm not at all certain you two will be able to share dreams while you're sharing the same reality. Somehow you're going to have to find a way to do that. Fast."

"Don't you dare tell me what I have to do!" Kendall burst out. "You put Zach and me in the wrong Pine Valley! I'm married to JR and cheating on him with Ethan! Do you even know who Zach is married to?"

"Erica," the Doctor answered, a definite twinkle in his eyes. "I know. Couldn't be helped though. This was the closest reality I could find to yours."

That brought her up short. "You did this to us _on purpose_?" she yelled.

The Doctor sighed. "I am used to being misunderstood," he told her. "But I would have thought a girl of your intellect and character would have instinctively trusted me."

"Sorry to disappoint you, you lunatic," Kendall grumbled. "Now get out of my dream, so I can referee the fight that's about to break out between Zach and Captain Kirk. Just as soon that lobster turns back into Zach."

"Kendall, I'm here to warn you," the Doctor warned her. "Adam and JR are planning to have you put away. But they don't know what forces they are unleashing."

She believed him but she didn't care. "Zach will find me. Zach will always find me."

"He won't know where you are," the Doctor told her. "They'll make it look like you ran away."

"Why would Adam and JR do such a thing?"

The Doctor tried to be clearer. "It won't be them who are making you vanish. They'll think you're safely locked up in Oak Haven, but you won't be. You'll be gone Kendall."

"Gone? Gone where?"

The Doctor had no idea and told her so.

"So what do I do?" she breathed.

The Doctor knew.

"You need to wake up and get Zach into your dream, so we can bring you both back to your true reality and stop whoever or whatever is trying to tear you two apart!"

Kendall was about to ask how the hell that was supposed to happen when she woke up. Somebody was pounding at the seedy door.

"Ethan, please," she mumbled, scrambling out of bed. "Don't make me throw you out again!"

But this time it was the right Cambias.

"Zach!" she cried, throwing herself into his open arms. "Where have you been? I've been going crazy! I fell asleep and had the most awful dream! And the worst part of it was you weren't in it! Well, you were in it for a while but then you became a lobster."

"Sounds interesting," he lied.

"The Doctor was there," Kendall went on. "He told me that you and I are supposed to do something important, but now I've forgotten what!"

"I know what we're supposed to do," he said huskily, pressing himself against her until they could barely breathe. Luckily, they had better things to do than breathe.

They smothered each other with burning kisses, unable to get enough of one another. Somehow he managed to carry her to the seedy bed, both of them laughing and crying at the same time as the realization hit. This wasn't a dream. This was real _They_ were real. And they were together. Nothing and nobody had been able to keep them apart!

"Wait," she said, although that was the last thing she wanted him to do.

"Can't," he answered. "I'm busy tearing your clothes off. Next I'll be busy tearing mine off. Too busy to wait."

"Zach, we're not dreaming," Kendall reminded him, as if he needed reminding. "We're used to making love to each other in dreams where anything is possible. How will it be for us now that we're wide awake?"

He pondered that. "What's your point, Lovely?"

She was biting her lip. "I'm trying to remember how it used to be between us. In our true reality, I mean. We were good together, weren't we?"

"We were great together," he corrected her. "Can I continue tearing our clothes off now?"

"I'm just afraid this won't live up to Wuthering Heights," she confessed. 'Or Sherwood Forest. Or Tara. Or Casablanca. Or West Side Story. Zach, I never want us to disappoint each other."

Zach kissed her on her nose, love shining in his eyes.

"I don't want that either, Lovely. But we don't have to worry. Wide awake or in a dream, I can't imagine we could ever disappoint each other."

"Oh, I hope you're right!"

"There's only one way to find out."

But Kendall was still talking.

"And even if we stink together, I'll still love you."

"That's extremely comforting. I'm touched. Honestly."

"I only want you to know that whatever happens now won't change the way I feel about you. Or the way you feel about me. Right, Zach?"

"Quiet, I need to concentrate."

What he needed to concentrate on right then, was her neck and left ear lobe. But she was still apprehensive.

"Right, Zach?"

"Right. Absolutely."

"And if it turns out we're not so hot, we can practice and practice and --"

His mouth covered hers, and slowly, then not so slowly they came together, their bodies remembering all the rhythms of ecstasy. Driven mad with passion and desire, they opened themselves completely to each other, until the only reality they cared about was the reality of each other's being. No longer, Zach, no longer Kendall, they were steel and fire becoming and rebecoming one.

And then she remembered the dream.

"Zach!" she cried out. "We need to talk! Now!"

"Later, Lovely," he countermanded, his body convincing hers that talking was the last thing they should be doing.

And then she forgot the dream.

------------------------

_Will Kendall remember Doctor Who's warning in time? Will Zach believe her in time? Can they still share dreams? Please tune in next week for even more questions!_


	19. Chapter 19

_Chapter Nineteen – "Danger Nears"_

_Previously – Kendall dreamed about Doctor Who, who warned her she was in grave danger. Then Zach arrived at the Pine Cone and she forgot the whole thing._

------------------------

Later, much later, that night.

"Are you sleeping?" she asked him.

"Not yet," he answered. "Don't wanna sleep. Guess I'm scared I might not dream about you anymore."

She propped herself up on one elbow and lovingly regarded her One and Only. She could hardly make him out in the dark. But he was there next to her, where he belonged. "Never gonna lose you again, Handsome," she vowed silently. "No matter what it takes."

He propped himself up on one elbow as well, so they were face-to-face.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi, yourself," she laughed. "What? You're waiting for reviews?"

It was his turn to laugh. He didn't need her to review the past three hours. All he needed was _her_.

"I keep trying to remember what I dreamed about before you got here," she was saying. "Doctor Who was there. He told me something scary."

"And I was there too, right?" he asked. "Before I became a lobster."

"You weren't really there," she clarified. "Not like you were in Tara and all those other wonderful places we dreamed about together." She looked away, suddenly shy. "I always used to dream about you in our true reality. But they were only dreams. You weren't really there. They were pretty good though."

Her gaze returned to his in time to see his smile, which lit up her heart. "You dreamed about me, Lovely? What did you dream about me?"

"All kinds of dreams," she recalled softly. "You were always saving me from someone or something. Dragons, ogres, goblins, my Mother. So one-sided. You think I could save you occasionally."

"You do save me," he said, kissing her lightly.

"Did you used to dream about me?" she asked. "In our true reality, I mean."

"I never used to dream in our true reality," he reported. Which brought up a subject he wanted to talk to her about. "You know, this could be our true reality," he suggested carefully. "Our new true reality."

"No, it can't" she thought.

"Zach, I need to tell you some stuff," she said, not wanting to tell him anything at all. "It's important."

"The stuff Doctor Whoever told you in your dream?" he checked warily.

"No," she answered. "I can't remember any of that. It's all hazy. What I have to tell you, well, I didn't dream this stuff up, Zach."

"Will I like any of the stuff you have to tell me?" he asked, suspecting that he wouldn't.

"You'll hate it," she predicted. "But you have to know."

"Can I know tomorrow?" he negotiated, playing with her hair.

"Tomorrow may never come," she said sadly. "We may wake up in separate worlds. It's happened to us before, Zach. And we still don't know how or why."

She was making sense, and he didn't like it.

"Kendall, we could be happy here!" he attempted to reason with her before she had a chance to shatter that happiness. "We're together, Ethan is alive and in nine months or so, we'll have Spike!"

"Ethan and I are having an affair, and I think he's Spike's father," she blurted out before either of them could stop her.

"There is no Spike," Zach said, not yet able to process the first part of her statement.

"That's right, I keep forgetting," a troubled Kendall replied. "There is no Spike in this reality. JR told me I thought I was pregnant, but Doctor Madden told me I wasn't."

They lay next to each other in silence for ten seconds.

"DR. MADDEN?" they cried out as one, a horrific idea hitting them both at the same instant.

------------------------

When Kendall didn't return to Casa Chandler by 4:00 a.m., Adam convinced JR to call the Police. Before they arrived, however, Ethan came to the door.

"I need to see Kendall," he explained to Brooke, who opened the door.

"It's four o'clock in the morning," Adam pointed out.

"Why the hell do you need to see my wife?" JR wanted to know, jealousy and suspicion seeping into his every fiber.

"Because I'm in love with her," Ethan confessed. "And something is wrong, terribly wrong. Besides her being married to you, I mean."

At which point the Police drove up, sirens blaring, and the Chief of Police came to the door.

"Omigod, JR, what have you done to her?" Ethan yelled, assuming the worst.

At which point Erica Kane stormed in.

"Oh, good," Brooke greeted her.

"Isn't this a little past your bedtime, Brooke?" Erica asked too sweetly. "You need all of your beauty sleep to fight those pesky Crows Feet!"

"Crows Feet are more in your department, Erica," Brooke replied good-naturedly. "I see you've added quite a few more to your collection."

"Erica, have you heard from Kendall?" Ethan interrupted, fear clutching his heart.

"Forgive me, Ethan," Erica admonished him gently, "but I haven't finished trading barbs with the current Mrs. Chandler. What was I up to? Oh, yes. Go to hell, Brooke. Oh, I forgot. You're already there.""

"You don't think we called Erica before we called the Police?" Adam asked Ethan tartly.

"Is Kendall still not home?" Erica cried out, turning her back on the current Mrs. Chandler. "Livia, you have to do something!"

Pine Valley's Chief of Police calmly took out her notebook and began making notes. "Erica, when did you last see Kendall?"

"Brunch," everybody answered but Ethan. He had seen her later than brunch, of course. At the Pine Cone. But she couldn't still be there. Could she? He was about to take Livia aside to tell her the last place he'd seen Kendall when Erica dropped a bombshell.

"Livia, Zach is missing too!" she reported, trying (and failing) to remain calm. "Ethan, have you heard from your Father? He left hours ago and he hasn't returned! I'm terribly worried!"

"My Father?" Ethan asked incredulously. "Erica, you're not saying he's gone missing too!"

Erica nodded tearfully, judiciously deciding not to reveal that Zach was a spy on a secret mission. Or so he had told her.

"Well, at least we know that Zach and Kendall couldn't be together," Livia reasoned. "Those two wouldn't willingly share the same universe. Unless, of course, they've both been taken."

"Taken?" Ethan cried out, not liking the sound of that at all.

"Who would have taken them?" Erica demanded hotly of JR and Adam.

Just then the ambulance from Oak Haven drove up, sirens blaring.

"Livia," Ethan whispered to her. "Kendall was at the Pine Cone this afternoon after brunch. I left her there. But that was hours ago. She should be home by now!"

"Yes she should," Livia sighed, seeing the entire picture (or so she thought) for the first time. "Pine Valley never changes."

------------------------

Unaware of, unmindful of, and perhaps unconcerned with the chaos caused by their disappearances, Zendall continued to grapple with the issues before them.

"Kendall, even if Madden stole Spike, it only happened in this reality," Zach attempted to reason with his distraught wife.

"Exactly!" she cried out. "That's why we have to find our way home! To the real Spike!"

"Even if Madden stole your embryo, how do we know it was Spike?" Zach posed. "What if it was Ethan's baby? Or JR's? It didn't have to be Spike! Spike could have been conceived tonight! By us!"

But Kendall was shaking her beautiful head.

"JR told me that I called him Spike as soon as I knew I was having a baby. If he weren't Spike, why would I name him that?"

Zach had no answer to that.

"I know you don't want to leave Ethan," Kendall said quietly, as if she could read his mind as well as his heart. "I don't want to leave Ethan either. But Zach, he's not the same man we knew in our Pine Valley. He's cheating on Simone with me. We've been having an affair for years! Before his engagement and all during my marriage! Our Ethan would never behave that way!"

Zach did have an answer to that.

"Our Ethan is dead," he said. "My son is dead. Only here, he's alive. How can I walk out on him, Kendall? Now that I found him by some miracle, how can I walk out on him?"

"You can't," Kendall murmured, sounding as miserable as she felt. "But I can. I have to."

Zach refused to entertain that possibility. "We stay here together or we go back together," he said flatly. "We don't separate. Understood?"

"Understood," she whispered. "But which will it be, Zach? Go or stay?"

He knew she must feel as if he were choosing Ethan over Spike.

"It isn't only Ethan being here," he pointed out to her. "It's also that we don't have a clue how to get back."

The question of their getting back had occurred to her as well.

"We could fall asleep and dream about the Doctor," she suggested. "Oh, Zach, I remember something! In my dream he said we had to do that! He was warning me about something, only I don't remember what. And he wanted us to dream of him together so he could help us get home."

"Wasn't he supposed to get us home the last time we dreamed about him?" Zach asked archly.

Kendall made a face. "Okay, he messed up before. But maybe this time he'd get it right. What other chance do we have?"

But Zach wasn't buying that. "Given his acute sense of direction, he'd probably take us to a reality where you're married to Stuart Chandler and I'm married to Bianca."

"You love Bianca," Kendall retorted. "And I love Stuart. So where's the risk?"

But Zach didn't find that remotely amusing.

"I won't lose you again," he told her in no uncertain terms, his gaze steady and determined. "No matter what."

In the distance they could hear police and ambulance sirens, breaking the still of their night.

"Somebody's in trouble," Kendall observed, never dreaming she was speaking about herself.

------------------------

_Will they stay or will they go? Will they have a choice? Please return for our Saga's next thrilling installment! Meanwhile, everybody have a Happy and Healthy New Year!_


	20. Chapter 20

_Chapter Twenty -- "Detour" _

_Previously: In a dream, Doctor Who told Kendall that danger was closing in, and Zendall shared some blissful hours in the Pine Cone, while Ethan and Erica worried, and Adam and JR called the Police (to find Kendall) and Oak Haven (to commit Kendall). _

------------------------

Doctor Who was in a quandary. What he had done was unprecedented. And yet he had no choice. There was no alternative. Or at least that was how it had seemed to him at the time. All the Powers of Darkness were closing in on her, and he couldn't let that happen for reasons he wouldn't allow himself to think about. So he had acted. Without weighing the consequences of his actions, he had done the unthinkable.

------------------------

Livia, Ethan, Erica, JR, Adam and Brooke got to the Pine Cone not three minutes after the Oak Haven ambulance and Pine Valley Police car arrived.

Kendall's room was empty. Of everything.

"The Pine Cone rents unfurnished rooms?" Adam asked, vaguely surprised.

"It wasn't unfurnished earlier today!" an amazed Ethan gasped. "There was a bureau, there was a chair, there were night tables, there was a bed!"

"There was Kendall?" JR asked numbly.

Ethan nodded, his head swimming with disbelief.

"So where is Kendall now?" Erica asked hollowly. "And where is Zach?"

"And where is the furniture?" Brooke added.

------------------------

Zach fought hard against waking up. There was something left undone in his dream. When had he gone to sleep? After the sirens had faded? But that hadn't happened. The sirens had only grown louder until --

"Zach, wake up," the voice urged him. "We've got to save her."

Zach woke up. He was still in the seedy bed from the Pine Cone. But Kendall wasn't next to him.

"They were going to take her," the voice was continuing, sounding sad and contrite. "I needed to do something. Anything. You can understand that. You're a Man of Action."

"Where the hell am I?" the Man of Action bellowed, now fully awake and fully bewildered. He scrambled off the seedy bed and into his clothes, which were scattered along with Kendall's clothes on top of the seedy bed covers.

"You're on the Tardis," the Doctor revealed. "I beamed you aboard about ten minutes ago. Actually, I beamed the entire room aboard. I'm not all that expert at teleportation and I didn't want to take any chances."

Zach's heart had begun racing wildly. "Where's Kendall? Why was I asleep? Where's Kendall?"

His second question was easiest to answer.

"I gave both of you something to put you to sleep directly after I beamed you on board. I was hoping to generate a dream state for the three of us. But before that could happen all hell broke loose and I had to improvise."

"Where's Kendall?" Zach repeated unable to understand a word the Doctor was saying and unable to care.

"Ah, the Doctor sighed. "Where indeed? Brace yourself, Zach."

------------------------

She was floating but not on water. Not on air either. What was she floating on? Where was she?

"I'm asleep," she told herself. "Perchance to dream." But what was the point of that? Dreams were a waste of time. She couldn't dream up anything she didn't already possess. "I have everything I've ever dreamed of," she told herself, thoroughly content if not thoroughly conscious. "Everything I've ever dreamed of."

------------------------

"JR, calm down," Livia tried. "I've already got an APB out on her." She looked over at a pale and shaken Erica. "On both of them."

"You can cancel the APB on Mrs. Chandler, Chief," one of the Oak Haven ambulance drivers informed her after calling in to report the patient they were supposed to pick up was missing. "She's safe."

------------------------

"She's _where_?" Zach asked the Doctor, not able, or perhaps not willing, to believe his ears.

"Zach, I had no other option. They were going to take her away. I had to put her somewhere safe."

"You put her in an insane asylum?" Zach exploded. "Why didn't you put her here with me? What could be safer than this demented phone booth?"

"She was here," the Doctor said patiently. "I beamed you both up at the same time. But I had to beam her out of here."

"You beamed her out of here with no clothes on?" Zach asked hoarsely, staring at her black sleeveless Channel, the Victoria Secret she had worn beneath that and the red Jimmy Chu stilettos she had kicked off the night before with such glee. "With no shoes?"

"There was no choice. There was no time. They were on to us. They'd have found her." The Doctor caught his breath. "They're not looking for you though. Although I can't quite understand why not."

"Who's on to us?" Zach demanded. "Who's looking for her and not for me?"

The Doctor told him all he knew. "There are alien entities tearing up the universe looking for you two. As I said, they can't trace you for some reason, Zach. Unless you're with Kendall."

"How do you know that?" Zach asked. "How could you possibly know that?"

"They were bombarding the Tardis with electromagnetic shock waves as soon as I took you two on board," the Doctor recounted. "For your own safety, I began to beam both of you out of here. But s soon as Kendall left, the shock waves stopped. They either don't want you or they don't know you're here."

"One question," Zach requested, resisting the nearly irresistible impulse to begin to slowly strangle the Time Lord. "Why aren't you beaming me down so I can rescue her?"

The Doctor looked as if he had something to tell Zach that he didn't want to tell Zach. "There's something I – Zach, I had to protect her. I had to make them think she wasn't our Kendall."

"_Our_ Kendall?" Zach echoed.

"I had to reactivate her amnesia program. She doesn't remember you anymore Zach, except as her Mother's husband. She doesn't remember your lives together. She doesn't remember your original reality. And to keep her safe, you've got to keep it that way. At least until you can get into her dream and bring her into my dream. So that we're all in the same dream. You know what I mean."

"_Our_ Kendall?" Zach re-echoed.

"As long as They think she doesn't remember, They'll leave her alone," the Doctor continued oblivious to Zach's question. "Once all of us are sharing the same dream, I can beam you both into another reality. Maybe even your original reality. That won't work if you're awake, of course, because all possible realities already have Zachs and Kendalls."

"So I've got to go to Oak Haven and convince Kendall, who, thanks to you, now only knows me as her Mother's husband, to dream about you and me," Zach summarized. "So you can beam the two of us someplace or other."

"Right," the Doctor said slowly, attempting to judge Zach's mood.

"Wrong," Zach thought, an alternate plan already forming in his mind.

"Don't forget her clothes," the Doctor said, adjusting the Tardis' teleportation device and aiming it at Zach. "She may need those."

"Thanks," Zach thanked him. "What would we do without you?"

------------------------

_What's Zach's next move? How much has Kendall forgotten and how much can she re-remember? Will Zendall ever find the right reality? Is Doctor Who following his own agenda? For the answers to these and other questions, please come back next Episode! (And, BTW, reading your reviews is MY favorite agenda!)_


	21. Chapter 21

_Chapter Twenty-One –"Totally Committed"_

_Previously: Kendall and Zach were beamed up from the Pine Cone by Doctor Who, who was forced, for her own safety, to beam Kendall off the Tardis and into Oak Haven after erasing her memories of Zach and her other realities,. Or so he told Zach. He wants Zach to get her to dream about the two of them so that the Doctor can re-attempt sending Zendall back to their original reality. Zach has something different in mind, however._

--

Myrtle Fargate could believe neither the content nor the urgency of Erica's call to her.

"Myrtle, it's Kendall!" the voice on her answering machine had cried out. "She's been committed! She's in Oak Haven but nobody knows how she got here! She appeared barefoot and naked in the fourth floor waiting room, totally incoherent! Please call me when you get this! I need you!"

"Bloody hell," Myrtle murmured, lighting a cigarette.

--

They gathered in the waiting room, demanding explanations of each other.

"Why is Kendall in Oak Haven, of all places?" Erica demanded, the loudest and shrillest of all. "Adam, what have you done?"

Adam was a study in injured innocence. "Done? Me? How should I know how she got here? They're telling us your loony daughter just appeared, naked as a jaybird. JR and I don't know any more about this than you do!"

"Erica, why don't you sit down and relax?" Brooke suggested. "Blaming Adam won't help Kendall."

Erica stiffened noticeably. "Just why are you here, Brooke? Aren't there any happy marriages in Pine Valley you could be destroying?"

Erica was alluding to the fact that Brooke had broken up Erica's twenty-year marriage to Adam. At least, that was Erica's view of why the marriage ended.

"We were never happy, Erica," Adam made clear. "But you have to believe that I'd tell you how Kendall got here if I knew."

JR nodded in sober agreement. "Erica, you were there when the ambulance driver told Chief Frye to cancel the APB. Nobody knows how she got here."

"Kendall knows," Ethan disagreed with passionate vehemence. "Kendall has got to know!"

--

Kendall knew from nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. She knew where she was. This was a hospital. She was in a hospital. But how had she gotten there? And when? She began to panic but stopped herself. He'd find her. He'd save her. Like always. She stared at the antiseptic white wall in front of her and tried to imagine his face. His beautiful, sensitive, caring face. There it was. "Find me," she told it. "Find me, Ethan!" At which point the face on the wall began to chance into somebody else. "Oh, not him!" Kendall gasped in recognition. "Anybody but him!"

--

Zach was beamed down at the gates of Oak Haven with a large shopping bag containing his wife's dress, undergarments and shoes. "At least Doctor What got this right," he muttered.

He had come to a decision. If what Doctor Who had told him was true, if Kendall's memories of their original reality had been erased to keep her safe from whomever or whatever was after them, then so be it. They could stay right where they were and make the best of their current reality. Why join Doctor Lunatic in a dream in order to return them to their original reality, when that might ultimately land them in enemy hands? Why try to solve a mystery that didn't need to be solved? Doctor Idiot said that They were unable to track Zach for some reason, and Kendall's blanked-out memory kept her as safe from Them as she was when Zendall had first begun sharing dreams. Someone or Something obviously didn't want Zendall back in their original reality. So why go look for trouble?

He made his way to the Waiting Room on the fourth floor, where he was told Mrs. Chandler's friends and relatives were, well, waiting.

"Zach!" Erica screamed in joy at first seeing him. "You're here! I thought they had killed you!"

"I got away," Zach said simply, warding off Erica's passionate embrace by kissing her quickly on the cheek.

"Hello, Dad," Ethan greeted him, his left eyebrow arching slightly. "Who is trying to kill you?"

"I don't think Who is trying to kill me," Zach laughed, amazed, delighted and grateful once again to see his son among the living. "But I do think Who's trying to steal my wife."

"What?" Erica asked.

"What's on third," Zach grinned, knowing an Abbott & Costello routine when he was in the middle of one. "Now where's my wi – where's Kendall?"

"First padded cell to the right," Adam replied at once. "Where she belongs. Your instincts were right about her, Slater."

Erica bridled. "Don't pay any attention to him, Zach! Nobody else does!"

"But Chandler's right," Zach maintained. "Where Kendall is concerned, my instincts have always been letter-perfect. Where is she?"

"What do you care?" JR challenged him. "Kendall means nothing to you. Your son's the one who's been boinking her behind my back."

Ethan winked at Zach. "Every chance we get!"

Zach sighed. So much was wrong in this reality. He looked again at his son. But so much was right.

"Come on, Zach. Let's go see our daughter."

Erica took his arm and led him down the corridor.

"_Your_ daughter," he corrected her gently.

"I wish you and she got on better," Erica sighed, leaning on him.

"We will get on better," he assured her. "I promise."

"What's in the shopping bag?" she asked.

"Designer clothing for your daughter," he replied. "See what a good step-Dad I can be?"

Erica staggered and teared up as she buried her head in Zach's chest. "Thank you, Zach! What would I do without you? This is such a nightmare!"

He kissed the top of her head. "Truer words were never spoken."

They went into Kendall's room together.

"I thought Adam said she was in a padded cell," Zach said.

"They were all out of padded cells, so they put her in semi-private."

Zach glanced Kendall's roommate, who was staring glassy-eyed and rocking herself in the bed on the far side of the room.

"Krystal," he murmured, recognizing her.

"You know that poor woman?" Erica asked.

"She used to be a slight acquaintance," Zach said honestly. "

"Mommy!" Kendall called out from her bed. "Mommy, get me out of here!"

Erica forgot all about Krystal and ran to her daughter's side.

"Kendall, what happened? How did you get here? They won't tell us anything!"

Kendall was shaking with sobs. "They won't tell me anything either! Except that I showed up with no clothes on and begged to be committed. But I don't remember doing that! What would I do such a thing?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Zach asked her, really wanting to know.

"Oh, get him OUT of here!" Kendall cried out. "Zach Slater is all I need!"

"Not so long ago, that was almost true," Zach reflected sadly to himself.

"JR is outside," Erica was telling Kendall. "He's terribly worried."

"Where's Ethan?" Kendall asked at once.

"He's waiting with JR and Adam," Zach reported.

"I want him here," Kendall cried out. "Mommy, please go get him!"

Erica sensed suddenly there was more to Kendall's friendship with Ethan than met the eye. "Maybe later, Kendall. Right now the Doctors want you to rest."

"Screw the Doctors," Kendall said, although she didn't quite know why she felt that way.

She looked as beautiful as ever, despite her disheveled hair, tear-stained cheeks, puffy eyes, running nose and the strait jacket they had put her in.

"Zach brought you some clothes," Erica said cheerfully.

Zach pointed to the shopping bag he held, as he searched for a glimmer of recognition on his soul mate's face.

"I don't want anything from him," Kendall told her Mother. "I hate him." She glowered at Zach. "I hate you."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Why are you in a strait jacket?"

Kendall tried to remember why.

"I dunno."

Erica knew. "She was trying to jump out of a window when they found her here this morning," she whispered to Zach. "She was out on the ledge."

"Because that's where Doctor Idiot beamed her," Zach said to himself.

"Well, she's not out on the ledge now." He went to the door and hollered for a Nurse.

"Get her out of that," he directed when the Nurse came into the room. "Now."

"Isn't he wonderful?" Erica asked Kendall.

"No," Kendall answered. "He is the exact opposite of wonderful."

Nurse Janet Dillon regarded Zach Slater with a mixture of pity and contempt. Relatives! In her wildest imaginings, she would never disobey a Doctor's order. She had lived her entire life following orders. It was what she did best.

"Mr. Slater, Doctor Torres instructed us to keep Mrs. Chandler suited up. It's for her own protection."

"Now," Zach said quietly. "Or I'll get her out of it myself."

"Don't let him touch me!" Kendall screeched. "Don't let him come near me!"

"Lovely, I only want to get you out of that --"

As he neared her, her screams and sobs grew deafening.

"You can see it for yourself," Nurse Janet said quietly to Zach and Erica, ushering them out of the room. "She's a complete fruit loop."

Closing the door behind her, she turned back to Kendall with a smile and a hypodermic needle.

"Time to go to Dreamland!" she said with a soothing simper, as she shot her patient up with enough thorazine to sedate a herd of elephants.

Out in the hall, Zach was scowling. Kendall not remembering their life together was one thing, but Kendall hating him to the point of hysteria was another thing altogether. Where the hell had that come from? More importantly, how could he get ever get through that free-floating hostility?

"Thank heavens you're here," Erica was sniffing. "I couldn't go through all this by myself. I called Myrtle, but she didn't pick up."

Myrtle! Myrtle existed in this reality! Zach felt hope rise in him. How bad could any reality be that had Myrtle Fargate in it? She'd know how he could reach Kendall! Hadn't she always helped Zendall get together and stay together?

"Where are you going?" Erica was asking him.

"To Myrtle's," he said, hurrying away. Then a thought struck him and he stopped. "Um. Erica, where does Myrtle live again?"

Erica laughed. "Where she's always lived, of course!"

"Her rooming house?" Zach tried.

"What rooming house? Myrtle lives in the condo right across from Kendall and JR. You know that, Zach!"

"The condo where my brother Michael died?"

"You had a brother?"

--

_Can Myrtle put Zendall back together again? Will Kendall dream? Why can't Zach be tracked by Them? Questions, questions, questions. Please return next week when Zen Trek treks on! Reviews are read and re-read!_


	22. Chapter 22

_Chapter Twenty-Two – "Questions and More Questions"_

_Previously – Kendall was commited to Oak Haven after appearing on a fourth floor window ledge sans clothes. Her memory was erased again (this time by Doctor Who to protect her from Them, he maintained) and she detested Zach. When he learned that Myrtle existed in this reality, Zach decided to seek her help._

--

Josh was on the phone to Bianca.

"How's Paris?" he asked, not knowing how much she knew. "How's Miranda? How's Zoe?"

"How's Kendall?" Bianca asked in turn. "I heard, Josh. Mommy called me at the break of dawn. She said she was going to call you next. Have you heard anything more?"

Josh weighed his next words carefully. "Do you care, Bianca? Do you really care what happens to Kendall at this point?"

Bianca had no intention of lying to her brother and best friend. "I wouldn't care if Kendall disappeared off the face of the Earth!"

--

Kendall was on board the Tardis again. She was also fast asleep in her bed at Oak Haven, having been thoroughly drugged by Nurse Janet Dillon.

"How much do you remember?" Doctor Who asked her.

"Where's Zach?" she replied.

"Do you know where you are?"

"The Tardis," she knew. She frowned. "Oh, I'm dreaming, aren't I? The real Tardis isn't this purple and orange. Where's Zach? Is he okay?"

"Zach is awake and well in your latest reality," the Doctor answered. "At the moment, he's probably coping with the fact that you loathe him."

"Loathe him?" Kendall yelped. "I _love_ him! Haven't you been paying attention? We're a Destiny Couple! _The _Destiny Couple!"

The Doctor sighed and explained to her how he had been forced to erase her memory for her own protection,

"But I remember everything now," she protested, confused. "Does that put me in danger?"

"You're dreaming," the Doctor reminded her patiently. "Them can't get to you when you're dreaming. Anyway, I don't think they can. So I deactivated your amnesia program. But when you wake up in Oak Haven, you won't remember me, or your life with Zach, or anything but the reality you're currently living in."

"Phooey," Kendall said. "Why do I have to hate my husband?"

"JR is your husband," the Doctor clarified. "And you have every right to hate him. He was going to have you committed."

"I _am_ committed," Kendall stated for the record. "I'm sharing a room with no view with KWAK of all people."

"Only to protect you from Them," the Doctor emphasized. "It's a temporary measure until Zach falls asleep and joins us. Then I'll beam you both back into your original reality. Hopefully."

Kendall had her doubts that the Doctor would be successful but she found herself feeling grateful to him all the same.

"Why are you doing all this for us?" she felt compelled to ask him. "Why are you helping us?"

The Doctor looked down at his shoes, shy for the first time in his 900 years. "I'm doing it for you, Kendall. I want you – in case things don't work out for you and Zach, I want you to know that they might work out for you and me. But you don't have to think about that right now."

"Good," Kendall said, stunned by the Timelord's revelation. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything!" Doctor Who told her.

"Why do I Zach and I hate each other in all of these realities?" she asked, not even close to any question the Doctor wanted to hear from her. "Even in Zach's reality before this one, the Kendall Hart who lived in New York loathed him at first sight. She had him arrested! And in my reality before this one, the Zach who lived in Las Vegas wouldn't even see me when I went there to find out what was going on."

The Doctor nodded. "Luckily, you did find out what was going on. You found me in Vegas."

Kendall squeezed his hand. "Yes, I did. And you've gone out of your way to help us, Doctor. It isn't your fault that Zach and I are further apart than ever." She looked hard at the Timelord. "Is it your fault, Doctor?"

--

Zach Slater was the last person that Myrtle Fargate ever expected to come knocking at her door.

"Are you kidding?" she greeted him.

"We need your help," he greeted her.

He looked awful, she noticed. Tired and rumpled and just awful. Good for him. Running away like that with Erica before anybody could stop him. He deserved to look awful.

"What you need is a divorce lawyer," she said tartly, refusing to let him into her condo. "And you can tell that to your deluded better half!"

She slammed the door in his face.

"And while you at it, you can tell her to stop calling me from the loony bin!" she added, re-opening the door. "Her damned daughter is exactly where she belongs!"

"Forgive me," Zach apologized before she could slam the door in his face again. "This was a case of mistaken identity."

"What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded, not really caring.

He looked at the cold, hard, unforgiving woman before him and sadly remembered the dear, kind, understanding friend who looked exactly like her. "You remind me of somebody I once knew. For a second, I thought you were her."

"Well, I'm not!" Myrtle proclaimed, slamming the door so hard it made his head ache.

--

Brooke was doing her best to comfort JR, who was busy glaring at Ethan with murder in his eyes, heart and every other major organ.

"Kendall will be fine," Brooke was saying. "She's like her Mother. She bounces back."

"She's like her Mother, all right," Adam agreed. "Nuts."

"Thank you SO much for the diagnosis, Adam!" Erica said, not bothering to hide her bitterness. "Everybody knows what an expert you are in the field of Mental Health!"

They were still in the Oak Haven waiting room, waiting for Kendall to wake up. Doctor Torres had told them they would know more later about Kendall's apparent total mental collapse.

"Why don't you go home?" JR asked Ethan. "Nobody wants you here."

But Erica rose immediately to Ethan's defense.

"I want him here!" she exclaimed. "And Kendall wants him here!"

"She does?" Ethan asked in wonder. She had seemed so distant the night before at the Pine Cone, acting as if she didn't want him there at all.

"She told me so herself before the nurse drugged her," Erica affirmed. "Don't let them bully you, Ethan. All of us here understand illicit love." She nodded at Brooke. "Some better than others."

"I don't even believe it," JR volunteered. "Kendall loves me. Only me. We were having a baby!"

"Spike was mine," Ethan informed them all. "At least he would have been if she had really been having a baby."

Erica broke the shocked silence that ensued.

"Ethan, where did your Father go?"

--

Ethan's Father had gone from Myrtle's condo into a state of total depression. It wasn't in Zach's nature to be depressed. He was, as Doctor Who correctly surmised, a Man of Action. The problem was that he had no idea what action he could take beyond going to sleep. He felt as if he were being pushed out of this reality, which meant being pushed away from Ethan, which was unacceptable. His plan had been to break Kendall out of Oak Haven and settle with her someplace in this reality. The reality that had his son in it. Kendall would be safe because the lunatic Doctor had reactivated the amnesia program, whatever that meant. Them wouldn't be interested in a Kendall, who didn't remember being part of Zendall. Whoever "Them" were. And for some reason, Them weren't interested in Zach even though he remembered everything. But why didn't Them want Kendall to remember? Zach didn't care. It would take months, years, forever to get through to the beautiful stranger in Oak Haven who hated him as completely as the Kendall back in his last reality had hated him. Who wanted Zendall to remain apart? In whose interest was it? Who had done this to them in the first place?

Before Zach could ask himself some more questions, a flower pot flew from out of the sky and knocked him cold.

--

Still in her dream, Kendall had grown pensive and sad.

"I wonder," she murmured. "If we ever get back to our true reality, will it be the same reality we were ripped away from? Things change so fast in Pine Valley. Newbies come to town for no particular reason, Veterans leave for no particular reason, sometimes without being allowed to say good-bye. If I was beamed back right now, would my friends still be there? Would my enemies? Would I even recognize the town I left?"

--

_She should only know. Not LOL. Sigh. But Fanfic is still here! And so are we! See you next week!_


	23. Chapter 23

_Chapter Twenty-Three – Dreaming Again_

_Previously: Torn between his love for his Son and his love for the Love of His Life, Zach sank into a state of depression, unable to choose between realities and unaware that Kendall had already been drugged into a stupor and was in a dream with Doctor Who. Interrupting Zach's angst, a flower pot mysteriously fell from the sky rendering him as unconscious as Kendall._

--

Zach came to in Kendall's arms. Well, he hadn't actually come to, but you know what I mean.

"If I'm dead, then this is Heaven," he said, gazing up at the face he loved beyond all other faces. "And since odds are Heaven would never let me in, I guess I'm still alive."

She hushed him with a kiss.

"We're both alive," she told him then, playing with his hair and silently counting his eyelashes. "We're not exactly conscious at the moment, Handsome, but we're alive."

"Hey, you sound like you don't hate me so much," he observed, deciding to stay exactly where he was for as long as he could.

She bent and kissed him again before answering.

"If I were awake in Oak Haven, I'd still despise you because I wouldn't remember what we have together. But I'm not awake, Zach. Neither are you. You're lying on the street unconscious because of the flower pot that we threw down on you. We're dreaming again."

"Why do you remember everything now?" he forced himself to ask. "And say anything except that Doctor Loonytune deactivated your amnesia program."

She laughed out loud. "Doctor WHO?" she giggled.

"Yes, Kendall?" a voice asked. "What do you need, Dearheart?"

Zach closed his eyes tight. "I want a different dream. Any dream. I don't care. Let's go back to the Titanic; at least we could swim for it!"

"This isn't what I wanted to happen of course," the Doctor was saying, as if Zach gave a hoot what the Doctor wanted to happen. "I planned to take both of you in your bodies from the Pine Cone. Kendall, there's every chance you're with child. My instruments detected as much when I beamed you up from the Pine Cone, before Them launched their attack. I wanted to return both of you to that time in your original reality before Spike was conceived. Then he'd be yours, Zach."

Kendall blinked back tears. "Why would you do that for us, Doctor?"

"He didn't do it," Zach pointed out acidly, reluctantly getting up and out of Kendall's lap. "He did just the opposite. We're up here dreaming while you're down there crazy and maybe pregnant with Spike. And I have a probable skull fracture."

"He tried, Zach," Kendall said. "But Them attacked the Tardis because Them sensed my presence and that I remember everything. He had to think fast and change his plan so he could protect us."

"So he says," Zach said darkly, staring daggers at the Time Lord.

"So we begin again," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Destination: your original reality!"

But Zach wasn't having any of it.

"Take us back where you found us," he directed. "That was a perfectly good reality. Take us back now. I'll get you out of Oak Haven, Lovely. I've gotten you out of worse places."

Kendall frowned. "But that Pine Valley was awful, Zach! I hated you, and Bianca hated me!"

That got Zach's attention. "Bianca hated you?"

"I heard Erica talking to Myrtle on the phone. Most people in that Pine Valley can't stand me. Bianca moved away to Paris with Maggie and Miranda mostly to get away from me. I think I tried to burn down their house a couple of times. And I might have let Binx think Miranda was dead for about a year."

"Myrtle seems to hate me because I married your Mother," Zach said sadly.

"She hates me too," Kendall commiserated. "Like everybody else does."

"JR seemed to love you," Zach offered.

"JR was going to have me committed!" Kendall reminded him. "That was not a good reality for me, Zach."

"It had its points," Zach sighed.

"Ethan," Kendall realized. "It had Ethan."

Zach grimaced. "And Ethan seemed deeply devoted you."

"Yeah, I got that," Kendall said. "But Ethan being deeply devoted to me wouldn't be so hot for you and me, Handsome."

"He'd be alive," Zach tried not to scream. "And in nine months we'd have Spike."

"So you two need a reality where Ethan is alive and not in love with Kendall, and Spike belongs to the both of you," Doctor Who summarized.

Zendall held their breath.

"You can – this is possible?" Zach was the first to ask.

"Anything is possible," the Doctor replied matter-of-factly.

"Then I'd like a Pine Valley where Dixie is alive," Zach said, not unmindful of the effect those words would very likely have on Kendall.

"Me too," Kendall said, surprising him. "And Brooke. I haven't seen Brooke lately."

"And Marian," Zach listed. "And Opal, of course."

"And Ryan," Kendall added. "And everybody else we loved in our original reality."

The Doctor regarded them kindly, an extraterrestrial Santa Claus granting wishes to troubled yet charming children.

"But going to that reality won't solve your basic problem," he reminded them. "Them may follow you there to destroy you."

"May," Kendall repeated thoughtfully. "So it isn't a sure thing that Them would find us?"

"They appear to be pretty good at finding you two," the Doctor said sadly. "Especially you, Kendall. But we could do something to throw the villains off the track a bit."

Kendall was tempted to let the Doctor take a whack at it, but part of her didn't want to let go of her original reality.

"If you take us back where we came from, Doctor, we'd have a chance of fighting Them, wouldn't we?" she asked. "We'd have a chance of finding out the truth of what's behind all of this."

"We'd have a chance of losing each other forever," Zach said tensely. "I can't risk that happening, Lovely."

"There are an infinite number of parallel realities," Doctor Who told them. "You could try hiding in any one of them. Maybe if we were clever enough, we could pull it off."

Neither Zach nor Kendall liked the sound of that, but it seemed their safest option.

"But give us some time first," Zach said, as Kendall nodded in vigorous agreement. "We need to dream some more before you transplant us into a new Pine Valley."

"Of course," the Doctor murmured, completely embarrassed to witness such intimate feelings. "Whenever you're ready, call me."

--

They were in somebody's bedroom. Kendall was in bed, dressed in a white negligee. Zach was bending over her, guilt written all over his face.

"What movie are we in?" she whispered. "Who are we playing?"

"Alfred Hitchcock's 'Notorious'," he revealed to her. "You're Ingrid Bergman. I'm --"

"Cary Grant!" she laughed. "I saw this picture about a billion times on television! We're in Rio, 1946. I'm Alicia Huberman and I've been poisoned by my Nazi husband played by Claude Rains. You're T.R. Devlin, a Government Agent, and you recruited me to spy on Claude Rains because my Father was a Nazi, so I wouldn't be suspected. I was supposed to make him fall in love with me, so you could find out what he was up to. However, I was too irresistible for my own good, and I wound up married. To the Nazi! But the most important part of the movie is the love story. You and I never planned to fall in love, but that's what happened."

Zach nodded. "Yes, that's what happened."

"Claude Rains started to suspect me and, with his Mother's help, began to poison me slowly. Rio sounds a lot like Pine Valley in the good old days."

"I've made my way into your bedroom to rescue you and to apologize for letting you marry Claude Rains."

"But I'm half unconscious from the poison and you've got to keep me awake by kissing me," Kendall prompted, hoping against hope he'd take the hint.

"When we finish kissing each other, we're going down a long staircase and out to a car that will take you to the hospital," Zach continued.

"Not Oak Haven," Kendall hoped.

"Not Oak Haven," Zach confirmed.

"Will I live?" Kendall wanted to make sure. "Is there a happy ending?"

Zach gathered her into his arms. "Always a happy ending with us, Lovely. Always."

Their dream-selves rose and fell together driven by the incandescence of their limitless passion. Zendall's souls collided into the fantasies they had created. They were every dream they ever shared, all morphing and melting one into the other. She was Maria, he was Rhett. He was Heathcliff, she was Ilsa. They clung together in a Dance of Life daring all the Forces of Darkness to separate them. He was thunder, she was lightening. He was Mars, she was Venus. They were twin constellations exploding into supernovas that rocked the Universe.

"Dream sex is amazing!" Kendall gasped after the fifteenth supernova. "But to tell the truth, I kinda like the real thing."

Zach couldn't disagree with her. "Wanna walk down that staircase now?" he asked softly.

Kissing her one last time, he lifted her off the bed and with him half-carrying her, they left the bedroom and found themselves at the top of a long white staircase.

"I love you, Zach," Kendall whispered, as they began their descent. "Whatever reality this leads us to, I'll always love you."

He held her tighter. Nothing would tear them apart again, he vowed silently. Nothing.

"We'll always be together," he promised. "We belong to each other, Kendall. Whatever else changes, that won't."

"We'll wake up in Pine Valley in each other's arms," she said, her head on his chest, leaning on him with all of her weight as they continued down the stairs. Something was wrong with her. Her head hurt and she was faint. "Zach, I feel so weak. Why do I feel so weak?"

"You've been poisoned," Claude Raines explained nonchalantly. He was waiting at the foot of the stairs with Doctor Who.

"Really?" Kendall breathed, clinging to Zach, afraid to look down because she was so damn dizzy.

"You're only dreaming, Dearheart," Doctor Who assured her, ignoring Claude Raines' sneer.

"Time to wake up in your new reality!"

--

Kendall woke up first, relieved and grateful that she felt neither weak nor dizzy. She felt peculiar, but strong. Unusually strong, as a matter of fact. One look at who was sleeping beside her made her run to the nearest mirror. Totally stunned by her reflection, she went back to bed and waited for Zach to wake up.

"The most important thing is that we're together," she murmured to her husband, who looked as little like his old self as she looked like her old self. "Although I'm not entirely sure you're going to see it that way, Lovely."

--

_OMG what has Doctor Who done to Zendall NOW? Please return next week for more startling developments! In the meantime, your review would be SO appreciated!_


	24. Chapter 24

_Chapter Twenty-Four – "An Almost Perfect Reality"_

_Previously – To escape Them, Zendall has been beamed into a new reality, where Doctor Who theorized that Them might not be able to track our heroes down. What new reality did Doctor Who choose that would so confuse Them that they would be unable to follow? Kendall, who was the first to waken in her new reality, found out. Now it's Zach's turn!_

--

Zach woke up slowly. Waking up had long since stopped being his favorite thing to do, but the morning sun filtering through the blinds gave him no choice in the matter. His first thought was of her. She had to be there. Whatever reality he was in, she had to be there.

Yawning, he stretched, feeling amazingly light and lithe. Where was he? Their condo? Their new house that he had hated at first sight? And where the hell was she?

"Don't panic," a voice told him then. A familiar voice, he thought. His voice. HIS voice? How could he be hearing his voice if he wasn't speaking?

His eyes flew open and he found himself looking at himself looking at himself.

"What?" he cried out in a voice that wasn't his own. But it was a familiar voice. A woman's voice. A woman's voice? It was HER voice!

"Try to stay clam," his double advised him. "We'll figure this out."

He was still dreaming, he thought. That was it. That had to be it. They were in a horror movie. They had never dreamed of a horror movie before, so it made sense. But where was she? How could he be in any dream-movie without her?

"Zach, I'm not you," the Zach who was next to Zach (where Kendall should be, but wasn't and where was she?) said. "Zach, I'm me."

"Of course you're you," he heard himself saying (only it didn't sound like him -- it sounded like Kendall). "Who else would you be?"

"Look at your hands," his double directed, sounding exasperated.

He brought his right hand up to his face and noticed at once that the red polish on a thumbnail that wasn't his thumbnail was badly chipped. Then he recognized the thumb in question.

"No," he managed before his double placed a mirror in his otherwise beautifully manicured hands. "Oh look, there's Kendall!" he said, gazing dumbly into the mirror.

"Wrong!" his double told him in no uncertain terms. "I'm Kendall. Zach, we've traded places. Faces. Bodies. You know what I mean."

"No!" he said again, launching himself out of bed and into the bathroom, where he faced the truth in a larger mirror. He was as beautiful as ever she was, he realized, his heart sinking and his (her?) head aching. Doctor Lunatic had done it again!

His double came up behind him, frowning with concern.

"Zach, this isn't the end of the world," it actually said. "We're still together, and that's the most important thing."

In the mirror, Kendall was saying to the him who wasn't him, "You aren't Kendall. You aren't my wife. I don't know who you are, and I don't give a damn."

"Do you know who _you_ are?" his double snorted.

"Good question," Zach said to Kendall in the Mirror, whose lovely mouth was forming every word Zach was speaking.

Forty minutes later Zach was for the most part out of denial and ready to cope with his/her new reality.

"We need to lay in a supply of sleeping pills," he/she said earnestly to her/him. "We can't depend on flower pots flying out of the blue to get us into dreamland."

She/he covered his/her beautiful hands with her/his manly mitts. "Zach, why are we jumping to conclusions? We don't know yet what this reality has to offer!"

His/her gorgeous eyes narrowed. "I can't be a woman, Kendall," he/she said to her/him in no uncertain terms. "Not even if that woman happens to be you."

She/he seemed taken aback. "What's wrong with being a woman?" she/he demanded.

"Nothing," he/she made haste to assure her/him. "Not a thing. Let's go back to sleep. We can dream about your Doctor, and I can show him how much damage a well-placed flower pot can do!"

She/he burst out laughing. "In other words, you're telling me that you're not man enough to be a woman?"

Zach ran his/her hands through his/her glorious mane. "I have nothing against women, Kendall. I love women. I'm nuts about one woman in particular. But you can't tell me you're all right with this! This is a nightmare!"

"Why?" she/he asked, really interested. "What makes this turnabout such a nightmare for you?"

He/she gave it some thought before answering.

"I'm not all here," he/she tried to explain. "Something is missing."

"I can't imagine what," Kendall deadpanned. "But you have a few new features to balance things out. Zach, think of this as a trade-off."

The phone rang, interrupting their surreal debate.

"It's Ethan," Kendall reported in an urgent whisper, having gotten to the phone first due to a new spring in her/his step as well as greatly increased striding ability.

Well, that was good news. His son was alive in this reality and on good enough terms with him to telephone. The problem was, of course, that he wasn't Zach's son anymore. In this topsy-turvy reality, he was Kendall's son.

"He's inviting us to a party," Kendall reported. "It's for Dixie and Tad. They're getting married again!"

Zach couldn't help but smile. In his original reality, Dixie had fallen hard for him when she had returned to Pine Valley after four years of being "dead". As best he could recall, when he had been yanked out of his reality, Dixie and Tad hadn't yet found their way back to each other. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that in time they would. And in this reality, they already had. What about their little girl, Kate? Was there a Kate in this reality? Was she still lost?

"And Kate is going to the be the Flower Girl!" Kendall concluded triumphantly, after ending her/his conversation with Ethan. "From what I gleaned, Kate was never lost and Dixie was never presumed dead. They just never bothered to remarry after the last divorce. But with Kate starting school, they thought it would be nice for her parents to be lawfully wed. What a breathtaking notion!"

"You glean good," Zach observed in open admiration.

"That's because I'm a woman," Kendall explained in her deepest Zach-voice. "W-o-m-a-n. Should I say it again?"

He/she shook his/her head vigorously. Zach didn't want to hear it. All Zach wanted was to fall asleep and dream their way out of there.

"No matter how I happen to appear, I'm all woman," Kendall reiterated. "And you, my titian-haired temptress, are all man!"

To his infinite horror, Zach detected a definite gleam in her/his eye.

At which point the phone rang again.

"It's your Mother," Kendall said, handing a confused Zach the phone.

"Oh, Erica, hi!" Zach greeted her, getting the drift. "What party? Oh, _that_ party. Kendall, I mean Zach, just got off the phone with Ethan. Sounds exciting." Zach motioned for Kendall to help, but she/he stuck her/his tongue out at him/her instead.

"Will Myrtle be there?" Zach asked hopefully.

"Will she?" Kendall asked hopefully.

Zach nodded.

"Who else?" he/she asked Erica. "Oh, Ryan. That's good." He/she did his/her best to ignore Kendall's smiling reaction to that news. "Will Erin be there? Good. And Simone? Good. And Dani? Good. And Brooke? Great. And Opal? Fantastic! And Palmer? Terrific! And Marian? Wonderful!"

"Ask about Jonathan and Lily!" Kendall requested.

"And Jonathan? Swell. And Lily? Yeah!"

"And Bianca?" Kendall prompted. "And Miranda? And Josh? And Jack? And Reggie?"

"And Bianca?" Zach checked. "And Miranda? And Josh? And Jack? And Reggie? Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Who else, Kendall, I mean, who else, Zach?"

"Ruth Martin!"

"Who's Ruth Martin?"

"Before your time. But you'd have loved her. Both of them!"

"And Ruth Martin? Which one? Ah, the original!"

"Ask if Babe and Krystal will be there," Kendall requested, crossing her fingers for luck.

Zach did so and relayed the results.

"Erica asked who in the world are Babe and Krystal?"

"Damn, I love this reality!" Kendall yelled, as she/he and Zach high-fived.

"That makes one of us," Zach sighed.

Shortly after that, Zach hung up the phone and turned to his/her wife, whom he/she noticed at once was staring intently, too intently, at him/her.

"Kendall, I am a heterosexual male," he/she said softly, reading her/his mind. "I can't be attracted to another man. Even if that man is you. Even though you look exactly like me, it would be impossible. _Especially_ since you look exactly like me."

"Well, of course you can always choose to limit your horizons," Kendall rejoined hotly, beginning to lose patience with her best beloved. "But if you're in a beautiful woman's body, and, let's face it baby, you are, why can't you be attracted to a completely gorgeous, sexy man? Like me?"

"Because I can't," Zach said flatly. "The only way I want to be in your beautiful body is the way I usually get there."

Kendall searched for the right words. "But we're soul mates, Zach! Why can't we discover ways to make each other outrageously ecstatic even in _these_ bodies?"

Silence.

"What's a body anyway?" she/he continued. "A cosmic suit of clothes, that's about all."

More silence.

"Zach, can't we at least try? I mean, before we fall asleep and dream ourselves into some other reality. If we can even do that. If we even want to do that. I mean, this reality seems so perfect. Everybody we love from our original reality is here plus Ethan! How do we know we'll ever find a Pine Valley as perfect for us as this one is?"

"It isn't perfect," Zach said evenly. "I'm not a man and you're not a woman."

"True enough," Kendall admitted. "But you're a woman, and I'm a man. You do the math."

Zach sensed something in Kendall's attitude that unnerved him/her more than he/she was _already_ unnerved.. "Kendall, you _want_ this, don't you? You want to make love to yourself!"

She/he vehemently denied that.

"Contrary to most people's opinion of me, I am NOT my favorite person. YOU are. Zach, I'd want you in any form you fell into! If Doctor Who turned you into a frog, --"

"Don't give him ideas!"

Kendall couldn't understand why Zach couldn't understand.

"What difference does it make how we look? Why can't we still love one another?"

"Kendall, I do love you. I'll always love you. Loving you is what I do. But I can't be with a man! It isn't in me! YOU can't be in me!"

Kendall swallowed hard. "So much for Spike," she/he whispered, fighting back the tears, telling herself/himself that big girls don't cry, especially if they were big boys.

'YOU WANT ME TO GET PREGNANT!" Zach shrieked in octaves only Kendall's voice could reach.

At that not uninteresting juncture, the phone rang once again.

"That was David Hayward," Kendall revealed after a short conversation. "Doctor David Hayward. In this reality, I guess he never left town."

"That's good," Zach allowed. "I always liked Hayward. He was the only person more hated in Pine Valley than me."

Kendall's expression was unfathomable. It put Zach in mind of a cat who had eaten a canary.

"David told me that Dr. Klater is out of town, but he'll be back Monday. So you can see him then."

"Why would I want to see Dr. Klater?" Zach asked tensely. "Isn't he a gynecologist?"

Kendall nodded cheerfully.

"And obstetrician." She/he took a deep breath. "It seems that you're three months pregnant, Zach. With our baby! Spike! _Our_ Spike!"

--

_Gosh! Not so long ago, events were forcing Zach to choose between Spike and Ethan. Now will he have to choose between Spike and his Identity? Please return next week for another fun-filled gender-bending episode! Are you as dizzy as I am?_


	25. Chapter 25

_Chapter Twenty-Five – "Insomnia"_

_Previously – In their latest reality, Zach and Kendall found themselves in each other's body. But not in the usual way. Kendall seemed to be accepting this bizarre turn of events better than Zach. Oh, and Zach learned that he was having a baby. _

------------------------

All Zach wanted to do was fall asleep. He had never had much trouble doing that before. Whatever worries plagued him, he had always been able to banish them long enough to drift away to dreamland. In the last months, since dreamland had become so vital to him, drifting away had become easier and easier. Until that night.

After a day spent touring Pine Valley and visiting people they hadn't seen since they had been taken from their original reality (as well as a few – like Ethan and Greenlee – who had disappeared from their original reality), Zach had ended up back in bed face to face with his double. Reminding himself that his double was really Kendall helped a bit, but only marginally. That face too close to his didn't look like his wife in the least. And knowing that to see Kendall's face, all Zach had to do was pick up a mirror helped even less. He yearned to meet her in a dream and force that damned Doctor to relocate them into a reality where they could be themselves, so to speak. If he couldn't dream, he'd settle for oblivion. Anything but this.

"Maybe we'll find something on TV that will put us to sleep," she/he suggested, trying to be helpful.

They watched television for three hours and although bored to tears, they were still wide awake.

"I should have gone to the gym and worked out," he/she grunted, punching his/her pillow for the twentieth time that half-hour. "A few hours punching a bag would have tired me out. By now we'd be dreaming our way out this hell."

Zach's attitude toward their transformation amused Kendall as much as it infuriated her. He should love her no matter what she looked like. No matter what he looked like. If love was real, nothing else should matter. Nothing else had ever mattered to them. Of course, nothing like this had ever happened to them. But so what? Life was always throwing unexpected hand grenades at people. Especially people from Pine Valley. She couldn't help but feel a trifle disappointed in the Love of Her Life.

"I'd have given anything to have seen you in the showers."

"That's why I didn't go," he/she confided glumly. "Whoever thought Zach Slater would ever turn down being in a shower room full of naked physically fit women?"

"Whoever indeed?" Kendall commiserated with a straight face. "But then whoever thought Zach Slater would get knocked up?"

"Stop making fun of me," he/she requested miserably. "It isn't polite to make fun of a pregnant whatever I am."

Zach had only just begun to come to terms with the fact that the body in which he was currently residing was with child. With _his_ child. Spike.

"Want me to sing you a lullaby?" Kendall offered. "That might lull you to sleepy-by. In fact, I think that's why they call it a 'lullaby'."

He/she was no more than a few inches from her/him on the bed they were sharing. Close enough to touch. She/he wanted to touch him/her like crazy. "Testosterone," she/he diagnosed. "Now I understand all the pathetic wolves who used to come panting after me. They were victims of chemistry, poor babies!" And now Kendall was one of them!

She/he gave Zach what she/he hoped was an encouraging grin . "You know, I could come up with a better way to lull you," she/he suggested meaningfully. "If I concentrate real hard. And you hold real still."

"Forget it," Zach ordered immediately. "We've all been through that. There's no way in hell that --"

"I can have my way with you," she/he finished with a sigh. "Well, Lovely, what's your plan? I'm as wired as you are. Sleep seems absolutely impossible. But if we fooled around a little, we might drift off. Who knows? Maybe it's worth a try. Nothing heavy. First base, maybe?"

"Don't call me 'Lovely'," he/she grumbled.

"So what your plan?" she/he challenged. "Counting sheep? More warm milk?"

Zach had to that point counted four million three hundred thousand two hundred and four sheep. In addition, he/she had downed close to two gallons of warm milk. Which he/she had thrown up almost immediately.

"Welcome to morning-sickness," she/he had diagnosed, sounding more clinical to him/her than sympathetic.

"It isn't morning," he/she had growled through his/her nausea.

"It doesn't have to be morning, Little Mother," she/he had cheerfully informed him. "When I was carrying Spike, I spent the first three months exactly where you are now, doing exactly what you are doing now. Day or night. Day _and_ night."

"This can't be Spike," Zach had groaned, holding his/her tummy in despair.. "I am having Rosemary's Baby!"

"Yeah, that's what I thought at first," Kendall had recalled. "I'm pretty sure that's what every woman thinks at first."

"How did you survive?" Zach had really wanted to know.

Kendall had laughed. "Soda crackers and Greenlee got me through," she/he had recalled fondly. "It was good seeing her today. I forgot how much I missed that little runt. I'm glad she and Ryan worked things out. Their little boy is so cute! Of course, not as cute as Spike. But cute."

In their travels around their new reality that day, they had bumped into Greenlee, Ryan and Baby Lavery, among others.

"This Pine Valley has a lot going for it, Zach."

He/she might have argued with her/him about that were he/she not throwing up again.

"Soda crackers are the solution," Kendall had decided. "Tomorrow we go food shopping!"

"Tomorrow we won't be here," Zach had vowed, unsteadily heading back to bed and hopefully to sleep. But hours had gone by, and although Zach's morning sickness had thankfully passed, sleep had continued to elude them both.

"You could punch me out," he/she said in desperation. "Or you could find a flower pot to smash over my head."

"And how am I supposed to fall asleep with you lying next to me bleeding to death with a fractured skull?" she/he queried.

"That's your problem," he/she muttered.

"You're my problem," she/he differed throatily. She/he moved nearer to him/her on the bed, not knowing how close she/he could get before he/she freaked out completely. "Close your eyes," she/he said softly. "Imagine I'm me."

He/she closed his/her eyes. "But you aren't you. You're me. You may never have noticed, but I don't like myself that much, Kendall."

She/he bit her/his lip and hesitantly began stroking the gorgeous curls cascading around his/her classically beautiful face.

"But I like you," she/he crooned. "I can see the real you behind the Kendall mask. Even with my eyes wide open, I can see you, Zach."

Actually, all she could see was herself, lying there with her eyes tightly shut and stiff as a board. Still he/she looked fabulous. "I should have been a model," she/he thought. "Look at that bone structure!"

She/he traced his/her perfect lips with her/his index finger, wanting more than anything to trace them with her/his tongue. She/he held her/his breath, waiting for him/her to yell at her/him to stop. When no yell got yelled, she/he moved ever so slightly closer.

"In your mind, Zach, in your beautiful mind, picture me as I was," she/he breathed, gently kissing his/her forehead.

Zach did his best to imagine his lovely Kendall nearer than near and closer than close, but the feel of chapped lips on his/her forehead did nothing to help foster the illusion.

For her/his part, Kendall had never felt so alive. Her/his head was pounding with excitement. Blood and a variety of hormones were rushing at warp speed through the body she was occupying. Her/his heart had begun to hammer wildly in her/his chest. White heat was throbbing in the parts of her/him that were completely new and unknown. "Wow!" she/he thought. "I never … wow!" As if they had a life of their own, she/he watched Zach's hands begin to slowly caress what so recently was her body. "Oh," she/he thought in complete and utter amazement, "I feel so soft!" And then, to her/his even greater amazement, she/he began to feel so hard.

"This is so _interesting_," she/he murmured, ripping open his/her nightgown.

"Kendall, we can't!" Zach cried out. But he/she didn't push her/him away as first their lips and then their tongues began to re-introduce themselves to each other, to every strange and yet familiar part of each other. Zach felt --- what? Odd. Zach felt extremely odd. This body straddling him/her (his body, that was _his_ body), felt so hard, so strong, so unyielding. Then she/he stretched out on top of him/her, and their hearts began beating as one. They began breathing as one.

Meanwhile the hunger in Kendall was building. "Zach must feel it too," she/he thought. "He has to feel it!"

"Zach, we both know what pleases us the most," she/he was whispering hoarsely, as they began moving together, all of her/his angles pressing hard against all of his/her curves, "we can do anything and everything to each other now that we love the best without even asking for it! For instance, I always go insane when you touch me … there. And kiss me … there. And bite me … there."

Beginning to feel things Zach Slater had never felt before, and completely unable to deal with any one of those feelings, his essence rose out of her body and unemotionally observed events taking place below him.

He saw himself (only that wasn't him anymore, that was her) flinging off his/her pajamas, throwing herself back on top of him/her, and making mad, passionate love to a body who refused to feel anything. Until suddenly he/she began to feel _everything._

"Baby, you're moaning!" Kendall cried out in delight as Zach re-entered a body that was on fire.

"Kendall, what's happening?" he/she groaned. "What's happening to me? To us? To me?"

"We're exploding, baby," she/he explained breathlessly. "Let it be, Zach! Let me love you!"

Moonlight was streaming through the half-open blinds. Between long, deep, wet kisses, Kendall looked down at his/her face. Oh Lord, he/she was crying! Soundless tears were streaking his/her cheeks!

"I'm torturing Zach," Kendall realized in horror. "How can something that bad feel so good?"

"Forgive, me, Handsome!" she/he cried out, ashamed beyond belief, but despite that, unable to stop the erotic dance that held both of them captive. In a superhuman effort, Kendall pulled away only to have Zach pull her/him right back where she/he had been.

It was then that she/he had a major crisis of confidence.

"Zach, listen. I don't exactly know what I'm doing. How could I? I've never seen things before from this angle! And I don't want to hurt you! That's the last thing I want! So, baby, you've gotta help me! Please, please tell me what to do!"

Although he/she was breathing heavily, and his/her mind was, at that point, almost totally incapable of coherent thought, he/she managed to reassure her/him.

"Kendall, you're not hurting me…believe me...you're not hurting me…you're doing fine…don't get too excited…think about hockey…that always helps me…sustain."

"That's your secret, huh? But I know zilch about hockey. Can I think about designers? Wait. Bad idea, That'll _really _excite me. I know. I'll count sheep. One sheep. Two sheep. Three sheep. Four she--"

"Omigod!" Zach was screaming, as his/her body took over completely. "OMIGOD!"

------------------------

_Will our Dynamic Duo finally fall asleep and dream their way out of this turnabout reality? Will they want to leave it if they have the chance? Will both of them feel the same way about that? Will Zach throttle Doctor Who? We're bound to find out some of the answers in our next thrilling installment! Your Review means EVERYTHING!_


	26. Chapter 26

_Chapter Twenty-Six – "Zach's Choice"_

_Previousl: In their latest reality, Zendall spent a night of gender-bending passion until they eventually fell asleep…_

--

They were in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, completely surrounded by Oompa-Loompas.

"I hope to hell this isn't the Remake," Kendall, looking exactly like Kendall, said to Zach, who once again looked exactly like Zach.

He swept her off her feet and into a mega-kiss that had the Oompa-Loompas cheering.

"I missed you," he told her when they came up for air.

She nodded, steadying herself against a giant chocolate toad stool.

"You're supposed to say you missed him too," the third Oompa-Loompa from the right advised her.

"Mind your own damn business," she advised the Oompa-Loompa.

"Kendall! Zach! How have you two been?"

The greeting came from Doctor Who, who was strolling along the chocolate river with Gene Wilder.

"I had sex with a man," Zach replied. "Does that tell you how I've been, you half-baked Flash Gordon?"

"Who's Flash Gordon?" the fifth Oompa-Loompa from the left asked the sixth Oompa-Loompa from the left.

"Before your time," he was told by the others.

"Kendall, you look as ravishing as ever," the Doctor observed, as he wondered to himself if seeing her would ever be boring or ordinary or anything less than exhilarating.

"I had sex with a man," Zach said once again. "Your doing, you alien creep. Is there any reason why I shouldn't do the galaxy a favor and end your miserable existence here and now?"

"Well, for one thing the Oompa-Loompas detest violence," Gene Wilder said earnestly.

"And for another thing, none of us is really here," the Doctor continued. "You know the drill, Zach. This is a dream. You and Kendall are still back in your condo in each other's arms and each other's bodies. So to speak."

"I like that Pine Valley," Kendall said quickly, hoping to distract Zach from slugging the Doctor, which she felt keenly he wanted to do more than anything. "It has all of our friends and relations in it. And we're pregnant with Spike!"

"_I'm_ pregnant with Spike," Zach clarified. "Why did you do that, Doctor? Why in blazes did you arrange for us to trade identities?"

"You did that?" Gene Wilder marveled, sounding tremendously impressed.

"It was nothing," the Doctor said modestly.

"I had sex with a man," Zach said again. "That was not 'nothing'."

"Zach, you had sex with _me_," Kendall sought to make clear to the Oompa-Loompas and Gene Wilder. "I only looked like a man. And not just any man. I looked like you. I was you. You know what I mean."

"There was a perfectly sound reason for camouflaging your identities by switching them," the Doctor maintained. "Them are after you, Kendall. They're after you too, Zach. But for some reason they can't seem to track you. So I hid you two in plain sight by beaming you down into each other. Elegant solution, really."

"He's about to say he had sex with a man again," Gene Wilder predicted.

"No, I was about to say I liked Johnny Depp better as Wonka," Zach said through his teeth, although, of course, that wasn't true.

"Doctor, couldn't you put us into the right bodies but in _that_ Pine Valley?" Kendall asked brightly.

The Doctor shook his head in the gravest fashion imaginable.

"The risk would be unacceptable. They'd find you in a Pine Valley minute."

Kendall turned to her best beloved.

"Zach, would you even consider staying as me? I mean, we'll never find a better Pine Valley!"

"Except for the one we were taken from," Zach said, doing his best to keep his cool. "Our home. Remember where we came from, Kendall? You used to want to get back there. Two realities ago, you wanted me to leave my son forever in order to try getting back there."

"JR and Adam were going to have me committed!" Kendall replied, hating the bitterness she heard in Zach's voice. "I _was _committed! I had to get out of that Pine Valley!"

"I could have handled the Chandlers!" Zach rejoined hotly. "You wouldn't have been in Oak Haven long."

"But I loathed you, Zach," Kendall said astutely.

"You wouldn't have loathed me long," Zach said wearily.

"But Them were after me!" Kendall cried out. "That's what you told me, Doctor!"

"Which reminds me," the Doctor was reminded. "Neither of you ever asked who began leading your lives after you were taken from your original reality."

Zendall blinked.

"I never even thought of that!" Kendall gasped.

"I assumed we just went missing," Zach said.

"Did you now?" the Doctor asked, shooting Gene Wilder a knowing glance. "Is that what you thought?"

"They didn't just go missing?" Gene Wilder asked.

"You two were taken over by Intergalactic Beings. Malevolent Intergalactic Beings."

"Them?" Zendall asked together.

"Them," the Doctor affirmed.

"And you know his how?" Zach asked, suspicion rising in his heart and mind.

"Where do you think I went tonight while you two were busy doing the Unthinkable?" the Doctor countered. "I paid your original reality a long overdue visit to scope things out." He suddenly looked troubled. "It's changed. You have no idea how much it's changed!"

"What we did wasn't Unthinkable," Kendall said softly. "It was different, that's all."

"What do you mean 'changed'?" Zach asked, preferring to forget how "different" making love to himself had been.

The Doctor waved his hands, dismissing the question. "Letting you two in on your future is a major no-no. The plan is to beam you down to a point just before you were taken. If by some slim chance, you defeat Them, you can't be privy to what's going to happen after that in Pine Valley. It would throw the entire time/space continuum out of whack."

"Dollars to donuts that stupid Annie got her hooks into Ryan," Kendall predicted uneasily. "I never liked her. She's probably one of Them. Am I right? Is she one of Them, Doctor?"

"Don't be silly, and don't ask anything more," the Doctor pleaded. "Let's go back to the Tardis, so I can get you two situated in your original reality." He studied Zach. "If you're sure you don't want to stay where you were? I take it you visited with Ethan, Zach?"

"We both did," Kendall answered. "He's a fine man in that reality. He's deeply devoted to his Dad."

"Which was you," Zach reminded her.

"And he and Simone are going to me married. He and I never had the affair we had in our original reality. He thinks of me as a sister."

"No," Zach corrected her. "He thinks of _me_ as a sister."

"I'm only saying we wouldn't have all that baggage in that reality," Kendall said.

"In that reality, I'm you and you're me," Zach summarized. "I'd call that baggage. Wouldn't you call that baggage, Doctor?"

Doctor Who looked nothing if not uncomfortable.

"So you're willing to give up a reality where your son is alive and return to your original reality, where Ethan is dead and gone. Is that your choice, Zach?"

Zach did not hesitate for a Pine Valley second.

"Yes," he said soberly. "I won't go back there. I can't go back there."

"Because he had sex with a man," Kendall sighed to the Oompa-Loompas. "He has Issues."

"You have to let _them_ in on that?" Zach yelled, as if he hadn't said the same thing himself more than once.

That did it.

"Uh-oh," the third Oompa-Loompa from the left said to Gene Wilder.

"Let's get one thing, you should pardon the expression, _straight_!" Kendall screamed at the top of her lungs. "You didn't seem to mind having sex with a man last night! Six freakin' times! You weren't complaining then, Zach! You were doing plenty, but you weren't complaining!"

All eyes turned to Zach, who looked as if he'd been struck by a two-by-four.

"Four times," he murmured to nobody in particular. "It was only --"

"Five and a half times. During the sixth time you fell asleep. Or fainted."

The Oompa-Loompas, knowing a song cue when they heard one, formed a circle and began to, well, sing:

_Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee do  
I have a perfect puzzle for you  
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee dee  
If you are wise, you'll listen to me_

_What do you get when you're vainer than vain?  
Loving yourself more than Erica Kane  
What do you get when it's all about you?  
What do you think you're gonna do?_

_You're the one you're gonna screw!_

_Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee day  
You can love you, but not all the way  
You will live in happiness too  
Like the Oompa-Loompa doom-pe-dee-do!_

"I want them out of our goddam dream," Kendall decried. "Now!"

But the Oompa-Loompas were not finished singing. As one, they turned to Zach.

_Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee do  
I have another puzzle for you  
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee dee  
If you are wise you'll listen to me_

_What do you get when you won't grow or bend?  
Being stubborn right to the end  
Don't you get tired always running the show?  
Why not simply go with the flow?_

_Be a trifle flexible!_

_Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee dial  
Passive aggressive isn't your style  
You will live in happiness too  
Like the Oompa-Loompa doom-pe-dee-do!_

"I'm with Kendall!" Zach growled. "Get them the hell outta here!"

"The truth hurts, doesn't it children?" Doctor Who sighed. He snapped his fingers, and they were all in the Dream Tardis, with no Oompa-Loompas or Gene Wilder in sight.

"Before I beam you back, you've got to know what you're up against," Doctor Who told Zendall in no uncertain terms.

"Them," Kendall said, shrugging. "We're up against Them. You told us already. Before the Oompa-Whatevers insulted us."

The Doctor nodded grimly.

"Were I you two, I'd make up your differences before you go back. Whatever you're going to be facing, you have no hope of defeating Them and recapturing your lives, unless you're united."

"We're united," Kendall said uncertainly. "Aren't we, Zach?"

Zach couldn't believe the fear and doubt he heard in the only voice in creation that mattered to him.

"I'd die for you," he told her, willing her to believe every word he was saying. "I'd kill for you. You are my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. I crossed over time and space to find you in dreams after Them tore us apart. I will never lose you again, Lovely. You're the only reason I've ever found for being. It's always been only you, and it will always be only you. Always only you!"

Kendall choked back tears.

"We're united," she told Doctor Who, as she fell into Zach's embrace. "We are completely and utterly and irrevocably united!"

"I hope so," Doctor Who said. "For your sakes, dear hearts, I hope so."

--

_Does Doctor Who really hope so? Once back in their original reality, how will Zendall grapple with Them? Who are Them? What have Them got against Zen? Why can Them track Kendall and not Zach? Please return next time as our Adventure continues!_


	27. Chapter 27

_Chapter Twenty-Seven – "Spike!"_

_Previously – After swearing their undying love, Zendall decides to attempt a return to their original reality, where they intend to defeat Them and retake their lives. Somehow._

--

Spike was behind bars, watching the world go by from his perpetual place in his playpen. It was morning he knew because earlier The Man had carried him from his crib to his highchair where a jar of baby food had been fed to him too quickly for him to register any taste. "Just as well," he thought philosophically. "It was probably oatmeal." After a quick wipe of Spike's chin, The Man had hoisted him out of the highchair and into the playpen.

"Talk to me!" he entreated The Man silently. "How am I ever going to learn how to speak if nobody ever talks to me?"

Without saying good-bye, or anything else, The Man left.

It hadn't always been like this, Spike knew. He could remember when The Man had not only talked to him, but had laughed with him. In those long ago days, he had not only been talked to and laughed with, he had been played with. And hugged. And kissed. And tickled. The Man had done all of that long ago, but he hadn't been the only one. The Woman had done all of that and more.

Remembering made him cry, so he did his best not to remember. Crying never did any good anymore. Long ago, he knew that even a little crying brought The Man or The Woman or The Other Man running to his crib, where he was sure to be picked up and walked. And sung to. And rocked. And hugged. And kissed. And cuddled. But none of that would happen now. Crying would only make him choke on his tears. So he wouldn't remember. He mustn't remember. But this morning nothing he tried to block those memories did a bit of good. Remembering, in spite of himself, and still trying not to cry, Spike began to whimper.

The most incredible thing happened next. The Woman came running out of the other room, with the oddest expression on her beautiful face. She seemed to be searching desperately for something.

"Desperately searching for what?" Spike thought. Not meaning to, he made a sound. Hearing that, her eyes widened and she exclaimed "YES!" as she followed that sound right to him.

"Me?" Spike thought. "She was desperately searching for me?"

"Baby!" she cried out, gathering him in her arms and picking him up out of the playpen. "My Baby!" But he wasn't a baby anymore, was he? "He's almost a toddler," she thought. "I've missed so much!" How old was he? Certainly under a year, she estimated. Had she missed his first step? His first word? She kissed his cheeks and eyes and nose and forehead and sundry and various other parts of him as she carried him to the couch.

"You've gotten so heavy, Spike!" she laughed to him. "My completely adorable Spike!" She held him up to get a better view of him and then clasped him to her heart, squeezing him as if she could make up for all the squeezes she had missed.

For his part, Spike regarded her quizzically. He had grown unused to The Woman making any kind of a fuss about him. Of course, she used to make all kinds of fuss about him all the time. But that was then. Spike gazed thoughtfully at her. Something had changed. Or changed back?

"I missed you, I missed you," she was crooning to him as she began rocking him. "Mommy missed her Spike SO much! Did Spike miss his Mommy?"

Mommy. The Woman used to call herself that, he remembered.

"Where's Zach?" she was crooning to him. "And where the heck are we?"

"Las Vegas," he thought. "The Man brought us here yesterday. Why don't you know that?"

"We need to find Zach," she was telling him. "I don't think the Doctor put us precisely where we were supposed to go. What else is new, right? Well, at least you're here, so he got that right! But you seem older than when I last held you. And we shouldn't be in Vegas. We're supposed to be in the house Zach didn't want us to buy for some reason. We have to be in the exact location we were in right before Them took us."

"Oh, The Woman's gone nuts," Spike surmised. "But it's nice nuts."

"I've been in lots and lots of Pine Valleys since I saw you last," she was telling him, her voice soothing the way it used to be a long time ago. "Some of those Pine Valleys were wonderful, but some of them were anything but. But even in the most wonderful Pine Valley, you know what was missing?"

Spike had no idea.

"You, Spike! Wherever we were, we couldn't find you! Along the way, we found versions of you, but not the _real _you. So not even the most wonderful Pine Valley would do!"

He tried to take all of that in. Had The Woman gone someplace? When? She was always there, with that cold, hard, unblinking stare on her beautiful face. He would have noticed if she was missing. She was there, always there, although she was very different from the way she used to be. When had that happened? When he was little, he supposed. Littler than he was.

"What's the matter, my sweet boy?" the Woman was asking him, sounding like he hadn't heard her sound in ages. "Why aren't you smiling? Why aren't you cooing? You look so confused! What's wrong, Spike? Have I been gone so long that you've forgotten me?"

Spike saw tears in The Woman's eyes. How could that be? The Woman never had tears in her eyes. The Woman never cried.

"Please remember me!" she was crying now. "I'm your Mommy! Mommy loves you so much!"

"Mommy!" he thought. "She's Mommy! How did The Woman become Mommy again?"

Before he could begin to figure that out, Spike heard a door open.

"Uh-oh," Spike thought.

"What on earth are you doing?" The Man's voice inquired.

"Cuddling my Spike," Kendall replied happily. "I mean, _our_ Spike. Although we haven't exactly worked that out yet, have we?"

The Man was scowling as he neared them. "We have matters to attend to," he said. "Stop wasting time."

Kendall thought Zach sounded as angry as he looked. What was going on? Despite his recent vow of eternal devotion, had he still not gotten over their gender-bender coupling of the night before?

"Handsome, are we okay?" she asked him hesitantly, hugging Spike even harder.

The scowl was joined by a puzzled squint. "What's the matter with you? Why did you pick him up?"

"Because she's my Mommy," Spike answered silently, hoping against hope she wouldn't put him down ever again.

For her part, Kendall was worried. Something was wrong with Zach. She needed to find out how much was wrong. Fast.

"I guess I should put him back," she murmured, reluctantly replacing Spike in his empty playpen. "Man, when was the last time somebody bought you a toy?" she thought absently. Before she let him go with one last kiss, Spike noticed that she had begun to breathe harder and she was biting her lower lip.

"Mommy, why are you frightened?" he wondered, feeling frightened as well.

"Zach, are you still upset because in our last Pine Valley, when I turned into a panther and you turned into a koala bear, I seduced you?"

The question hung unanswered in the air for several seconds.

"You did _what_?" a thoroughly baffled Spike thought. He looked up at The Man, to see if any of that made any sense to him.

"Are you drunk again?" The Man demanded scornfully of Mommy, his voice colder than ice.

Kendall stiffened imperceptivity.

"This couldn't be happening," she thought, trying to breathe normally. "You have to be him. In this Pine Valley, if you're not him, you're one of Them."

But maybe he was only teasing her, getting back at her for the seduction that _had_ taken place. The phrase "whistling in the dark" came into her head.

"Hey, I realize we have to find and vanquish Them as soon as possible," she said carefully, her heart pounding in her ears, "but you know me. Cuddling Spike always comes first!"

"Them?" The Man echoed, his scowl deepening. "What the hell are you talking about, Zartz?"

--

_Zartz? Who's Zartz? Hmm. Sound a bit extraterrestrial to you? Please return for our next amazing installment when we'll all find out what's going on! Maybe!_


	28. Chapter 28

_Chapter Twenty-Eight – "Zendall Reaches a Critical Juncture"_

_Previously – Kendall woke up in Las Vegas without Zach but with Spike. When Zach finally showed up, Kendall soon realized he wasn't the right Zach. Worse than that, she suspected he was one of Them!_

--

Zach, the _real_ Zach, was in Las Vegas as well. Only it was the Las Vegas of four years before, when Ryan and Kendall had barged into his casino looking for Erica, who was then appearing nightly as the shortest showgirl on the Strip.

It all seemed so familiar to him. He was replaying scenes he had long ago put behind him. In spite of himself, he began to visualize Maria Grey, whom had had known and loved as Maureen Gorman, the Woman with No Past. Kendall and Ryan had inadvertently lit the fuse to the bomb that had destroyed Maria's marriage to Edmund. Zach Slater had been that bomb.

"Ancient history," Zach reminded himself. He had to concentrate on the storyline at hand. Any minute Kendall would march through that door with Ryan. "She better be my Kendall," he said to himself. That morning, when he woke up without her in a bed he barely remembered ever sleeping in, he felt as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. Hard. "Doctor Whoever, strikes again!" he had groaned, pulling himself together enough to shower and dress. Upon further reflection, it made a crazy kind of sense. In that Las Vegas, Kendall and he weren't together yet. This is where they met and fell into an intense mutual dislike. "Don't be that Kendall," he prayed with all of his being. "Be the Kendall who loves me as much as I love her." Of course, this isn't where either of them was supposed to be. They were supposed to be beamed back to a point directly before Them threw Zendall out of their lives, giving them amnesia and separate Pine Valleys in the process. "This was your last chance, Doctor," he vowed darkly.

Accepting that he had to play out whatever hand had been dealt him, he rushed down to his office and waited for Rendall. He didn't have to wait long.

"Where's my MOTHER?"

This Kendall came at him, screaming and waving her fists.

Ducking, Zach searched her enraged eyes for a trace of recognition.

"Hospital," he sighed, giving up.

"How dare you?" this Kendall yelled. "How DARE you?"

"Kendall, we don't know the whole story," Ryan was pacifying her.

"You got _that_ right," Zach muttered.

"Ryan, I need to find her!" Kendall was sobbing on Ryan's shoulder. "She may be trouble!"

"She is in trouble," Zach affirmed, recalling the difficulty Erica had posed when first she had entered his life. "She's drunk as a skunk. Constantly. Day and night. Night and day. Blotto."

Kendall regarded him with murder in her eyes.

"I love you too," he said, meaning it.

--

In another time, in another Las Vegas, the real Kendall was facing a Zach who wasn't Zach.

"What the hell are you talking about, Zartz?" he asked her. "And why were you playing with the baby?"

"Who the hell is Zartz?" Kendall thought. "Oh, boy. Whoa. This could be important. This could be _vital._ He thinks I'm Zartz, whoever Zartz is."

"I was just killing time till you got here," she explained, avoiding Zach's eyes. Only, of course, that wasn't Zach, Kendall knew instinctively. That was a Them. She looked down at her son, who was watching her intently from his playpen. "Do you know it too, Spike?" she wondered. "Do you know that's an imposter?"

"It isn't time we have to kill," Imposter-Zach said testily. "Who said he was beaming Zendall into our timeline."

"Who said that?" Kendall repeated tonelessly. "Doctor Who?"

Imposter-Zach nodded. "The next time we wake up, we won't be ourselves. Zach and Kendall will have taken us over. Or so they think."

"He doesn't know," Kendall realized. "He doesn't know I was asleep. He doesn't know I've already woken up."

"We'll take turns sleeping," he was droning on. "I'll go first. When I wake up, you'll kill me."

"Of course," Kendall said numbly. "Um. That solves our problem how?"

Imposter-Zach gave her a funny look. "When Zach's soul is dead, I can take over again. Permanently."

"Oh, of course," Kendall said. "Then I'll go to sleep and when I wake up --"

"Bang bang," Imposter Zach said.

Spike began to suck his left thumb. He didn't understand a word they were saying, but he didn't like the sound of it at all.

--

Once he got Rendall out of his office and on their way to Erica in the hospital, Zach decided his best, and perhaps only, course of action was to dream his way back to the Dream Tardis so he could find out what had gone wrong this time. Sleep, however, did not come easily to him. A quart of scotch remedied that, however.

"Oops," Doctor Who greeted him. "I bet you want to knock my block off."

"Where is she?" was all Zach wanted to know.

"Las Vegas," the Doctor said at once.

"Wrong," said Zach. "I'm in Vegas in a drunken stupor. Kendall was there too, but it wasn't her. It wasn't the right her, the real her. You know what I mean."

"Your Kendall is in a different time line," the Doctor expanded. "She's several months beyond the end of the Satin Slayer Storyline. Zendall returned to Las Vegas but this time they took Spike along."

"What the hell is the Satin Slayer Storyline?" Zach asked, not really caring.

"That began directly after you and Kendall were taken."

"You're telling me Them were Us for an entire storyline? They got away with that? Nobody noticed?"

The Doctor appeared thoughtful. "There was a great deal going on. February Sweeps and all. Truth to tell, Kendall was a bit extreme. When she found out Emma was Ryan's daughter she kept that from him for no particular reason. And she went for long periods never seeing Spike but not seeming to care too much. But all in all they were terribly believable. But then why shouldn't they be? Galioscians are natural actors. Shape shifters generally are. Nobody caught onto to them but Zarf."

Zach's head was beginning to throb.

"How do you know all that?" he asked. "How could you possibly know all of that?"

"I've been watching," the Doctor revealed. "You'll never guess who the Satin Slayer is!"

"I don't care. I don't care about Satin Slayers or Galioscians or Zarf. Whoever that is. I only want to be with Kendall. What part of that don't you understand?"

The Doctor took a deep breath.

"Zendall has reached a critical juncture. She's about to murder you."

It was Zach's turn to take a deep breath.

"Am I supposed to understand what the hell you're talking about?"

"Showing is always better than telling," the Doctor said, snapping his fingers.

They were in Kendall's room in Vegas. She was on the couch along side a sleeping Imposter-Zach, holding a gun on him. Spike was in his playpen, never taking his eyes off of her.

"I know this is probably a stupid question," Zach said to the Doctor. "Why is she --"

"He told her to kill him as soon as he wakes up," the Doctor explained. "As soon as you wake up. You know what I mean. A better question is, why don't Them know that she's the real Kendall?"

While Zach was giving that some thought, the real Kendall was mulling over the same question.

"This is too easy," she was thinking. "Zach will wake up, and we'll reclaim our lives. So Them will go bye-bye without a fight?" She studied the gun Imposter-Zach had given her so that she could plug her own true love. "He said Doctor Who told him he was beaming us here. But the Doctor was supposed to beam us to the time right before Them took us over. Besides, why would the Doctor tell Them anything? Was he trying to trap Them? But then why didn't he tell Zach and me what he was planning? And why didn't this fake Zach know I was not another Them? The Doctor said Them could track me. So he should have known. Nothing fits, Spike. Nothing fits."

"What happens next?' Zach was asking the Doctor.

"That depends," the Doctor replied. "Kendall is about to begin wondering which Zach will be waking up. Will it be you or will it be one of Them? Given her talent for over-analyzing, I'd say she'll decide Them are tricking her and act accordingly."

"Them are tricking me," Kendall said to Spike, who hung on her every word, even though he could make no sense out of any of them. "That phoney Zack knew I'm the real Kendall. So it won't be our Zach who'll be waking up. It will be one of Them." She leaned toward Spike, her left eyebrow arching. "You're asking yourself, why did he give me the gun if he knew he was going to be the one waking up?"

Not knowing how else to answer her, Spike gurgled.

"That's the fiendish twist," Kendall told him. "He gave me the gun to win my confidence. He'll pretend to be my Zach when he wakes up, knowing that I'd never hurt the real Zach Slater in a jillion years."

"But that's where he's wrong," Doctor Who guessed.

"But that's where he's wrong," Kendall said. "The second he opens his eyes I'll blast him to smithereens." She sniffed. "Doctor Who may have betrayed us, Spike. If so, our Zach could be anywhere." She fought back the waves of panic that threatened to engulf her. "Omigod, Zach could be dead!"

Zach did not like the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"I'm here, Kendall," he whispered urgently, knowing she couldn't hear him.

"She can't hear you," the Doctor told him anyway. "But soon enough you'll wake up and she'll hear your dying breath. If that's of any comfort to you. Although I don't see how it possibly could be."

"I thought you were on our side," Zach told him ruefully, although he never really thought that.

"Zach could be dead," Kendall repeated, her heart breaking with every word. "Spike, it may be just you and me against the Universe."

"Kendall, I'm not dead!" Zach screamed, willing her to hear him.

"Yet," Doctor Who smiled.

"Get out of my dream!" Zach thundered.

"I'm not in your dream, Zach," the Doctor said quietly, too quietly. "You're in _my_ dream."

"I won't wake up," Zach said in defiantly. "You can't make me wake up in that body!"

"Silly Dilly, of course I can," the Doctor said, snapping his fingers.

Zach felt himself drawn irresistibly toward his body. Fighting every step of the way, he was sucked down, down, down into himself. The last sound he heard before waking was Kendall cocking the gun.

--

_OMG! Will Kendall shoot Zach? Dead? Is Doctor Who in league with Them? Who are Them? What are Them? Why are Them? Has McT really been fired as Head Writer? Some of these questions will be answered right here next week!_


	29. Chapter 29

_Chapter Twenty-Nine: Zach Meets Zarf/Zoe_

_Previously – Them tricked Kendall into believing that the Zach who is about to wake up isn't the real Zach. But he is. _

------------------------

Kendall cocked the gun and drew in her breath. She was betting everything that one of Them, trying to outwit her, was about to wake up and pretend to be her Zach. The real Zach. You know what I mean.

Zach's eyes fluttered open and found themselves looking straight into the barrel of a 44.

"Kendall, it's me!" he managed to get out before she pulled the trigger.

"Like hell it is!" she cried out, praying she was doing the right thing, all the while in agony, fearing she was guessing wrong. Which she was.

The bullet left the gun's chamber on its deadly way to the area on Zach's face which was right between his eyes.

It was then that time stood still.

Zach squinted. In front of him was a bullet hanging in mid-air. A frozen Kendall held the smoking gun (the smoke was frozen), a look of horror on her face (which was also frozen).

In that instant, in that moment out of time, Zach began to remember.

_Slater had just thrown Rendall out of his office so they could go to the hospital, find Erica and get the hell out of his life. He felt enormously weary. Or was he bored? He sat down heavily at his desk, opened a drawer and took out the gun he kept there. "For emergencies," he had joked to himself a long time ago. Well, what was this, if not an emergency? _

"I know they say the path of true love never runs smoothly, but this is ridiculous," an affected voice intoned.

Somebody had entered the room and, strolling past a frozen Spike and frozen Kendall, sat next to a still squinting Zach on the couch.

"A 'thank you' would be nothing if not appropriate," he observed languidly, crossing his long legs.

"I don't know you," Zach heard himself say, willing himself to stop remembering a scene that he had never lived.

_He put the gun to his head and smiled. "You win, Father. See you soon, Michael!"_

"Everybody knows me," the stranger differed, flipping back his long blonde hair. "I'm famous in this timeline. I know. You don't like rock and roll. You're the easy-listening type. Say it isn't so."

"It isn't so," Zach complied, trying once again to clear his mind. When had he ever put a gun to his head when he was in Vegas?

_The Clinic had been blacked out but the found Kendall easily enough in Madden's examination room, stretched out on a table, all set to be implanted with Greenlee's fertilized egg, looking annoyed, frightened and incandescently beautiful._

"_What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"_

"_What's going on? Where's Doctor Madden? Where are the lights? What the hell are you doing here, Zach?"_

That never happened either, he thought. He never saw Kendall at the Clinic.

"What's happening?" he asked now. "Why aren't Kendall and Spike moving? Why the hell isn't that bullet moving? Is this a Supernatural Thriller Dream?"

"If this were a dream, it would be less like 'The Exorcist' and more like 'The Matrix', so we're talking pure science fiction," the stranger answered him. "But as it happens, you're wide awake, Zach. And thanks to yours truly, you're still alive."

_He put the gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, his head exploded and time stopped._

Only that had never happened. He had never entertained thoughts of suicide except briefly when Ethan had died and things had gone completely haywire with Kendall. But that was later, much later.

"Unless you find yourself another place to sit, when time starts again, that bullet won't miss you Zach."

"Doctor Who wanted to kill me," Zach said more to himself than the lanky young stranger who claimed to have saved his life. "I never saw that coming."

"Don't take it to heart," the stranger advised. "How could you know everything that's been going on? There so much you still don't remember. That's why I'm here."

"And you are?" Zach asked him, standing up and moving out of Kendall's line of fire.

"That is the question," the stranger mused.

"You're Hamlet?" Zach guessed.

"Not yet," the stranger said. "Right now sometimes I'm Zarf, and sometimes I'm Zoe. Sometimes I'm both. Sometimes I'm neither. But always, always, I'm a composer, musician, singer, transsexual, lesbian and extraterrestrial. At your service."

That was lot to take in. Especially since Zach hadn't gotten past Doctor Who betraying them and Kendall being tricked into shooting him. Not to mention time standing still. Not to mention the memories crowding his consciousness, none of which made any sense to him.

"And you did this?" he asked. "You made everything stop?"

"Cheap theatrics, I know," Zarf/Zoe admitted. "But what choice did I have? The Hero can't die. And certainly not because the Heroine plugs him. There has to be a happy ending. Even though it's against all odds. _Especially_ because it's against all odds."

"I want answers," Zach said as quietly and as menacingly as he knew how. "Are you one of Them?"

Zarf/Zoe responded at once. "Never. I'm one of You."

Zach laughed out loud. "In your dreams!"

Zarf/Zoe waved away the insult. "I never dream. Waste of time and energy. I daydream, of course. But then, what is an artist without her fantasies?"

Zach gave it another go.

"Are you here to help us fight Them?"

Zarf/Zoe nodded. "Fighting Them is all I ever seem to do these days."

"Who sent you?"

"Who didn't send me. I sent _him_. Actually I tipped him off that Kendall was in Vegas looking for answers. If Mulder hadn't told her about that UFO Convention, the Doctor would have met up with her anyway. I would have made sure of that."

"Thanks a lot," Zach said as sarcastically as he knew how, which was pretty sarcastic.

Zarf/Zoe executed another hair flip.

"The Universe is an incredibly complex organism," (s)he explained to Zach, his/her hand under his/her chin. "You have no idea at all who you really are. Have you?"

"Alexander Cambias, Jr.," Zach recited.

"Not so much," Zarf/Zoe said. "Haven't you begun to remember anything interesting?"

"_Zach, I'm here as a Surrogate. You know that. Doctor Madden is going to give me Greenlee's fertilized egg. I'm going to carry Ryan's baby for her. Where IS Doctor Madden? At least the lights went back on. What could ave caued that blackout? Zach, why do you have that look in your eye? You better get out of here. I mean it, Zach! Zach, stop!" _

_Zach Slater's lifeless body fell across his desk._

"I seem to be having a total mental collapse," Zach reported. "I'm remembering things that never happened. Things that couldn't have happened. Things that are completely contradicting each other."

"Good!" Zarf/Zoe exclaimed, slapping his/her knee. "My work is done for now. See you anon!"

So saying, Zarf/Zoe disappeared, time resumed, and Kendall's bullet hit the wall, smashing a horrendous lithograph of the Vegas Strip by night.

"Yiiii!" Spike cried out at the sound of the gunshot.

Kendall dropped the gun and picked up her baby.

"I'm sorry, Spike. I had to shoot him. He was one of Them! I had to protect you!"

"You shot the picture," Zach said quietly, walking over to her and Spike.

"HOW DID I MISS YOU?" Kendall screamed at him. "I was aiming right at --"

"It doesn't matter, Lovely. It's me."

"The hell it is!" she cried, putting down Spike and picking up the gun.

He found himself once again staring down the barrel of the 44. Only this time he wasn't so sure he didn't deserve it.

"Kendall, I may have done a terrible thing to you. I'm starting to remember something. Something I hate."

There was a quality in Zach's voice that sounded sad, full of pain and not Themish at all.

"Handsome, is that really you?" she breathed, putting down the gun and falling into his arms. "Omigod, I nearly shot you!"

"I may have deserved it," Zach said. "We need to talk."

Spike looked up from his playpen as The Man and The Woman clung together. The Man was different now too, he thought. He seemed to be the way he was a long, long time ago. Filled with a contentment he hadn't felt for forever, Spike began to babble for the sheer joy of it.

"Mamamamamama!" he hollered at the top of his little lungs.

Kendall and Zach turned to him at the same instant.

"Mama?" Kendall cried out in ecstasy. "You said 'Mama'! Spike, you're talking!"

Zach picked him up and hugged him with all of his heart.

"I missed you, little man!" he told him, kissing the top of his head. He refused to let any false memory get in the way of their reunion. Spike was Ryan's son. Zach loved him as if he were his own, but Spike was Ryan's son. "Hey, you missed me too, huh?" he laughed at Spike, who was at that point squealing in all-out delight at the unaccustomed hugs and kisses.

Kendall happily looked at the two loves of her life, momentarily forgetting that she had nearly murdered one of them.

"Spike baby, can you say 'Zach'?" she asked him. "Say 'Zach", Spike!"

"Dada!" Spike said triumphantly.

------------------------

_Zarf/Zoe is an ET? Zach killed himself in Vegas four years ago? And four years later forced himself on Kendall in Madden's blacked-out fertility clinic? Spike is Zach's son? Please return for our next spine-tingling episode when Zendall will grapple with all of this and more!_


	30. Chapter 30

_Chapter Thirty: "Picking Up the Pieces"_

_Previously – Thanks to Zarf/Zoe stopping time in the nick of time, Zach avoided being killed by Kendall, who guessed wrongly that he was one of Them. However, terrible, contradictory memories of his own suicide and how Spike was really conceived have come into Zach's mind. What do they mean?_

--

"I might have killed you," Kendall wept in Zach's arms after they had put a still-babbling, still-ecstatic Spike into his crib for a well-deserved nap.

"You didn't kill me," Zach comforted her. "I'm still alive. You can feel my pulse. Or anything else you'd like to feel."

She didn't even crack a smile.

"Kendall, cheer up!" he ordered, in an attempt to snap her out of it. "We've won! We've taken back our lives! Them are gone!"

But Kendall was too traumatized to celebrate their apparent victory.

"I was shooting at you at point-blank range! I can't understand how I missed!"

"You didn't miss," he told her. "I moved away."

She began crying harder than ever, as her meltdown continued.

"How will you ever forgive me? How will I ever forgive me? Oh, Zach, you've got to believe me! I was so sure you were one of Them! I love you, Zach! Always only you! You're my husband! I'm your wife! I'd never knowingly try to kill you!"

They were back on the couch, staring at the floor at the remains of the lithograph that had taken the bullet for Zach. Kendall couldn't stop crying.

"I know you'd never knowingly try to kill me," Zach told her patiently for the tenth time. "Don't worry about it. It wasn't your fault. I know whose fault it was, Lovely. Not you. Never you."

"You move awfully fast," she sniffed. "I still can't understand how I missed you."

He grinned at her. "I have hidden talents."

She giggled, even though she couldn't quite let go of what she had nearly done to the Love of Her Life. Then she remembered something crucial.

"The Them called me 'Zartz'. He thought I was one of Them."

"Zartz?" Zach repeated, as if the name meant something to him, which it almost did.

"But the Doctor said Them could track me," Kendall continued, making Zach lose his train of thought without meaning to, which she often did because he'd rather concentrate on her than on anything else in the Universe. "Why didn't that Them know I was me?"

Zach shrugged. "Lovely, I would advise us both to take anything Who ever said to us with a huge grain of salt. He's not on our side."

Kendall resisted that notion. "Of course he is! He's kept us safe from Them! Why would you think --?"

"Our friend the Doctor jammed me back into my body after he showed me you deciding to kill me because you got the idea that Them tricked you. He knew you'd see things that way. He was counting on it. He wanted me dead, Kendall, and he wanted you to be my killer."

Kendall couldn't begin to fathom that.

"But … but why?"

Zach had no doubts on that score.

"A man in love will do almost anything to get the woman he wants, the woman he needs, the woman who is driving him mad with desire. Which in Who's case would be you."

Kendall blushed.

"You sound like you're talking from experience, Handsome," she said happily. Off-hand, she couldn't imagine anything she loved more than hearing Zach telling her in detail how crazy he was about her.

But the look on his face was the furthest thing from romantic, she thought. He looked positively tormented.

"Zach, what is it? Are you still upset because I nearly shot you to death?"

"I'm upset because of what I may have done to you."

He had to tell her. There was no way not to tell her.

"When time stopped, I began to remember things," he began , searching for the right words, as if there were any right words.

"Time stopped?" Kendall gasped. "How did --?"

"Zarf/Zoe stopped it, so I could get out of the way of that bullet," Zach explained.

Kendall looked nothing if not confused.

"Who's Zarf/Chloe?"

"Zoe," Zach corrected her. "A friend. Anyway that's what he told me. I mean, what she told me. You know what I mean."

"No, I don't," Kendall said honestly.

"Anyway Zarf/Zoe saved my life."

"Thank you, Zarf/Zoe," Kendall said softly. "What would I have done, if --?"

"Kendall, there's more," Zach said uneasily. More than anything, he would have liked not to tell her what he very probably did to her in Madden's blacked-out fertility clinic. But he couldn't go on living with her, loving with her, if she didn't know what was very possibly the truth.

"I'm Spike's Father," he said miserably.

"Yes!" she said at once, pulling him to her and hugging him hard. "In every way that matters, you are Spike's Father!"

This wasn't going to be easy.

"As I started to say," he began again, "when time stopped, I started remembering stuff."

"Nice stuff?" she hoped.

"Not exactly. One of the things I remembered was the night I blacked out Madden's clinic. The night you became pregnant with Spike."

The last thing Kendall wanted was to go there.

"Zach, that was so long ago! I forgave you for causing the blackout a zillion times! Will it make you feel better, if I forgive you again?"

"Stop," he told himself. "Stop now. Before it's too late. Before she remembers the truth and throws you out of her life forever."

"There's more than that to forgive me for," he want on, in spite of himself. "I caused more than the blackout. I'm starting to remember --"

"Starting to remember?" Kendall asked, suddenly interested. "Like we started to remember everything about our true reality that Them wiped out of our minds when Them stole our lives?"

"Something like that," Zach said. "Although I'm surprised Them didn't let me keep this particular memory. It isn't good, Lovely."

She began to feel alarmed.

"What isn't good?" she demanded nervously. "What are you talking about, Zach? Everything is good! We're in our original reality! We took our bodies back from Them! We have each other! We have Spike!"

He had to tell her. There was no going back now.

"When I found you that night in the fertility clinic --"

"You never saw me that night at the fertility clinic."

"I forced you to --"

She pushed herself out of their embrace, with such ferocity, she ended up on the opposite end of the couch.

"You never forced me to do anything!" she cried out, shaking with fury. "That didn't happen, Zach! Whatever it is you think you remember, THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN!"

His face, the face she loved better than she had ever loved anything in her life, was a study in agony.

"But, Kendall, I clearly remember --"

The room was swimming in front of her eyes. She couldn't be hearing him correctly. He couldn't be saying this to her.

"You actually remember forcing me to --"

"No!" he shouted. "I haven't remembered that part yet. Not yet."

She nodded. "But you're guessing that will be the next memory?"

He nodded. "Everything I do remember seems to be leading to that." He sighed. "Besides, how many times, since we began finding each other in our dreams, have we thought of Spike being ours? Not yours and Ryan's, but ours?"

"No," she said reflexively. "All that feeling meant was that at some point, in some Pine Valley before I became pregnant with Ryan's baby, you and I got together and created Spike. But as things turned out, that didn't happen."

Zach forced out the next words from a throat which was as dry as dust.

"Unless it _did_ happen."

Suddenly she shared his horror. If he had attacked her that night before Madden ever inseminated her with Ryan's sample, if Spike was his because he had attacked her that night before Madden ever inseminated her with Ryan's sample, how could they go on together? And even if they found a way to go on together, how could anything ever be the same between them?

"I know you need time to think this through," he was saying to her, not looking at her, afraid to look at her. "It's too much to process right away."

They sat in silence then. She, too shocked to speak. He, too far in down in Hell to speak. She stared at the broken lithograph lying in pieces on the floor.

"In pieces," she thought. "Like me."

Then she had another thought.

"This is BULLCRAP!" she realized, breaking their silence of despair. "What are we talking about? I believe in you, Zach! I believe in us! You would never hurt me! You would never take me against my will! It isn't in you!"

With all of his heart, he wished he could believe that. With all of her heart, she wished she could convince him.

And then it came to her.

"I know what happened!" she exclaimed excitedly, practically jumping and down with glee. "It was a false memory! Doctor Who planted a false memory in your mind to break us up!"

Zach considered that, grateful he had something to consider other than what he had probably done to her. But soon he saw the flaw in her theory.

"Why did he need to break us up? You were going to kill me. That would have broken us up but good."

But Kendall was on to something, and she wouldn't let it go.

"The Doctor couldn't be sure I'd pull the trigger, so as a back-up plan he made you think you attacked me. Wow, I knew that he had the hots for me. But I never thought he'd go to such lengths to destroy us, Zach! Believe you me, I never would have trusted him, if I had the slightest --"

"We had to trust him. He was the only way we could get from Pine Valley to Pine Valley."

Kendall nodded.

"So where do we go from here, Handsome?"

Zach knew. There was only one place to go. There was only one place the three of them, Zendall and Spike, belonged. And this time they didn't need Doctor Who to get them there.

"Pine Valley!" Zendall said as one.

--

_Is our journey near its end? With Zendall back in their original reality, and Them nowhere in sight, what's to keep our SuperCouple from their Happily Even After? Plenty! Please return for our next thrilling episode when Zendall will return to Pine Valley!_


	31. Chapter 31

_Chapter Thirty-One: "Back in Pine Valley Again"_

_Previously – Zendall survived Las Vegas intact, except for Zach's horrendous flashbacks of (a) killing himself and then years later (b) impregnating Kendall against her will. Kendall assured him that he never attacked her and he must be remembering some nightmare scenario implanted in him by Doctor Who. But Zach still has misgivings. _

--

Their private jet touched down at midnight at the Pine Valley International Airport. It was eerie coming back to everything they had left, everything they had missed for so long. They had existed at first separately and then together in versions of Pine Valley. Now they had reached the Real Thing. They were home.

"Doctor Who said this timeline was several months after we were ripped out of our reality," Zach reminded her, as they walked into the condo they had shared after their marriage.

"I missed seven months in my baby's life," Kendall said, kissing a sleeping Spike and putting him gently into his crib. "He's practically two-years old! I wonder why he isn't talking in whole sentences. And shouldn't he be walking by now?"

Zach nodded grimly. "I guess Them weren't exactly nurturing."

She shuddered.

"Zach, are we safe?" she asked him, filled with a sudden terror that they weren't. "Are Them gone for good?"

He wished he could tell her what she wanted most to hear, but he wasn't all that certain their battle with Them was over. And then there was Doctor Who to consider. What would be that villain's next move?

"Let's try living one day at a time, Lovely," Zach sighed, keeping his misgivings to himself. "How's about we just concentrate on each other and Spike? We've gotta make up seven whole months to this little guy."

"We'll get him up to speed," Kendall whispered, looking down at her baby, who was smiling in his sleep.

"Pretty soon I'll be teaching him how to play soccer," Zach agreed dreamily. He had always secretly longed for a son he could play soccer with. He had missed all that with Ethan. _Ethan. _He had lost him forever. Again. He vowed never to let that happen with Spike. He stopped short, suddenly aware how much of him wanted to be Spike's real father.

"I can't want that!" he thought in agony. "Not if it means that I hurt _her_!"

"You're remembering the nightmare fantasy Doctor Who implanted in you," Kendall told him, reading his mind which he felt she was disconcertingly good at doing. "You never attacked me, Zach. Not in Madden's Clinic or anywhere else. Trust me. I'd have remembered." She poked him playfully in the ribs. "And you'd _still _be walking funny."

But to Zach, this was far from a laughing matter.

"You were strapped down on a table," he said to her, the words sounding as if they were being torn out of him. "You couldn't defend yourself!"

Afraid they'd wake the baby, Kendall pulled Zach out of the nursery and into their bedroom.

"Are you remembering anything else?" she asked tensely. "Are you remembering what happened next that night?"

"No!" he told her. "I just keep seeing you on that damn table screaming at me to get out!"

"But you don't actually remember --?" she asked.

He shook his head and she began breathing again.

"Because nothing happened," she concluded. "It's all a bunch of hooey. Doctor Who's futile attempt to trash us."

He desperately wanted to believe that. In a way, it made sense, since his other memory, that of committing suicide years earlier in Vegas, didn't jive with anything. Which memory was true? Either? Neither?

"Is there something you're not telling me?" she asked perceptively.

"When have I ever kept anything from you?" he replied with a straight face.

Her gaze fell on the flashing red light on the answering machine.

"We've got messages, Handsome," she advised him. "And that's only our phone. Our e-mail inboxes must be bursting." She rethought that. "Oh, I guess Them picked up all our phone and e-mail messages. These must be new."

Absently, she wondered why she didn't want to push "play". Then she took another look at him and she remembered. They had better things to do. Like each other.

"Want to listen to these tomorrow?" she suggested, her voice dropping to its sultriest level. "It's late and we haven't slept in our own bed in who knows how long. Or done anything else in it more interesting than sleep." That brought an intriguing question to her mind. "I wonder if Them ever made it with each other when they were us. Using our bodies. When we weren't here. You know what I mean."

"What a disgusting thought," he marveled, not considering the question intriguing at all. "Yuk!"

"Yuk?" she laughed. "Zach Slater, Debonair Man of Action, says 'yuk'?

"Zach Slater, Debonair Man of Action, has been through a lot lately," he said in his own defense.

"Like boinking yourself," Kendall said, reminding him of their recent gender-bending adventure. "Well, don't you want us together again in the old-fashioned way? You get to be the boy this time!"

"I'm looking forward to it," he let her know, wondering why that wasn't the truth of how he felt. "But first let's find out what's been going on around here. I need something to take my mind off – that other thing."

By that, of course, he meant what he may or may not have forced her to do in Madden's Clinic. "That's the reason I don't want to jump into bed with her," he realized with a sinking heart, "I'm afraid of what I'll begin remembering as soon as we begin --"

"As soon as we finish hearing our messages, I'll take your mind off everything but me," she promised.

"Sounds good," he lied.

He pushed "play" and they waited.

"You have messages," the machine informed them. "Beep."

"Kendall, are you back yet?" Erica's voice demanded. "Why don't you ever answer your cell? Jeff and I have been out of our minds!"

"Jeff and I?" Kendall echoed, bewildered. "Not Jack and I?"

"After all you've gone through, and considering your condition, I don't know why Zach had to drag you and Spike back to Las Vegas! Please call me the second you get this!"

BEEP.

"You have a condition?" Zach asked Kendall.

"Kendall, I really need to talk to you," Bianca's voice, sounding unusually desperate, pleaded. "Zarf is going ahead with the hormone treatments and surgery, and I'm really scared I'm going to lose him! He's such a wonderful guy! And I'm sure he'd make a wonderful girl, and I was cool with that at first. Actually, 'cool' is an understatement. I was so totally on board. But that was before. I'm so confused! Please call me when you get this!"

BEEP.

"That doesn't sound like my sister," Kendall said to Zach. "I mean, what she's saying doesn't sound like Binx. I wonder what she means by 'before'? Who the hell is Zarf? Oh, do you suppose she's talking about Zarf/Zoe?"

"I hope not," he said. "I know how this sounds, but I really wouldn't want her getting mixed up with an extraterrestrial."

"Kendall, Annie really wants you as Matron of Honor," Ryan's voice announced next.

"Dammit, I knew that Greenlee Lite would get her hooks in him!" Kendall cried out.

"For Spike's sake, I think it's worth postponing the ceremony until after your delivery date. Maybe by that time he'll have learned how to walk, so he can be ring bearer. Annie agrees with me."

BEEP.

"My what?" Kendall asked Zach, trying not to screech.

"He said deliv --"

"Kendall, if Babe calls you, please find out where she is," Josh's voice said next. "She's all that matters. If JR finds her before I do, he'll kill her!"

BEEP.

"Why would I care if JR killed Babe?"

As if to solve that mystery, Babe's voice came over next. "Kendall, I want to throw you the best Baby Shower ever! But with Simone and Erin gone and Dani in Hawaii, I don't know who all to invite. Especially since I'm still on the run with Little A and it isn't going to be safe for me to sneak back to Town until next Sweeps, at the earliest. Actually, I may stay out here in L.A. for good. Jamie might even join me out here. Ya never know. Hey, don't tell anybody! Meanwhile, as far as the Baby Shower is concerned, Mama can't help out because she and Tad are still out looking for Can't Call Her Charlotte Anymore. Can you believe Adam kidnapped that baby right out of the hospital? Colby is useless and Sydney is nowhere to be found. I asked Greenlee, but she says she doesn't even know you. I'd ask Bianca, but she and Zoe are so into each other these days, I don't think she can focus. Zoe's starting to get the idea Binx likes him more as a guy than a gal. Go figure! I sure wish Dixie was still around! Damn those pancakes! Please don't tell JR or Josh where I am! Forget I said 'Los Angeles', okay?"

BEEP.

"Baby Shower?"

"Simone and Erin gone? Gone where?"

"Baby Shower?"

"What does she mean she wishes Dixie was still around? What do pancakes have to do with anything? Where's Dixie?'

"Baby Shower?"

"Kendall, if Babe calls you, please find out where she is," JR's voice said next. "She's all that matters. Please tell her I'm glad she's not dead and I have no idea where my Dad and Janet took Can't Call Her Charlotte Anymore. And tell her I'll always protect Krystal."

BEEP.

"JR thought Babe was dead?"

"He probably dropped a construction site on her."

"Why can't they call the Chandler baby Charlotte?"

The next message was from Tad.

"Zach, I don't want you to overreact, but your Father has escaped from Statesville. He's probably on his way to kill you. Jack has reassembled the Task Force, but we may not find him in time. So be careful. Krystal and I will be back in Pine Valley as soon as we find our daughter. I hope you and Kendall will still be alive when we get back."

BEEP.

"My Father has escaped from Statesville?"

"I thought your Father was dead. Didn't Ryan spread his ashes over the desert?"

"Why isn't Tad with Dixie looking for Kate? Did he say _our_ daughter?"

"That may be why they're not calling her Charlotte anymore."

"Zach, Kendall!" Doctor Who's voice came on next. "You are in cataclysmic danger! Them have regrouped and have taken over three people who are the closest to you! Please meet me in the Tardis in your dream tonight!"

BEEP.

--

_After all he's done and not done, is Doctor Who to be trusted, or does he have a not-so-secret agenda? Can Zendall process all that has happened in Pine Valley while they were gone in time to save themselves from Them? Who are Them currently pretending to be? Will Zach's fear of remembering what may have happened at Madden's Clinic keep him from making love to Kendall? When will Kendall realize she's pregnant? Whew! Please return for our next spine-tingling brain-teasing episode!_


	32. Chapter 32

_Chapter Thirty-Two: "Two Not-So-Sleepy People"_

_Previously – Zendall returned to Pine Valley, only to learn of all the unsettling developments that transpired during their absence as well as to receive a dire warning on their answering machine from Doctor Who, who warned that Them were out and about and had taken the form of three of Zendall's nearest and dearest. Meanwhile, Zach was still haunted by flashbacks._

--

Even if Zendall had wanted to fall asleep, they would stayed wider than wide awake. There was too much to process for them to float away to dreamland, or wherever else they were going to wind up.

"I'm pregnant," Kendall was musing as she lay on her back next to Zach, who was also on his back. Both of them were staring straight up at the ceiling. "How could I be pregnant? I don't look pregnant. I don't feel pregnant."

"If I make love to her, I'll start flashing back to Madden's Clinic," Zach was musing at that instant. "Since Vegas, every time we touch I feel transported back there." He hadn't remembered actually forcing himself on her, but he was convinced that more ghastly memories were on their way. "If we make love, I'll remember everything," he thought miserably.

"How could Ryan possibly fall for that Annie creature hard enough to marry her?" Kendall continued to muse on a different topic. "Maybe he's finally accepted the end of Rendall." She pondered that. "But that still doesn't explain why he would take up with that – omigod, I'll bet she's one of Them!"

"How could my father be an escaped prisoner?" Zach was continuing to muse, also on another topic. "He's been dead for four years. Ryan had him cremated him and threw some of the ashes over the desert. I had the rest buried. It doesn't get much deader than that." His mind drifted to his suicide flashback. "But I died. I came back."

_Slater had just thrown Rendall out of his office so they could go to the hospital, find Erica and get the hell out of his life. He felt enormously weary. Or was he bored? He sat down heavily at his desk, opened a drawer and took out the gun he kept there. "For emergencies," he had joked to himself a long time ago. Well, what was this, if not an emergency? _

"_You win, Father. See you soon, Michael!"_

_He put the gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, his head exploded and time stopped._

_Zach opened what was left of his eyes and tried to make friends with this new body There wasn't much left to make friends with, however._

"_I better clean up this mess," he thought, putting Slater's head back together and wiping away any tell-tale blood that had dripped onto the desk and floor. "There! That's better! Good as new." He felt himself grinning. "Actually, better than new!"_

"Zach, do I look pregnant to you?"

He blinked hard. Had he been asleep? Dreaming? Nightmaring? Flashbacking?

"I don't, do I? You'd tell me if I looked pregnant, right?"

Kendall had pulled up her nightgown and was pointing to her flatter than flat tummy.

"Of course, I'd love being pregnant," she was going on. "But I sort of had my heart set on Spike's little brother or sister being human, you know? If Them mated while inhabiting us, what sort of creature do you suppose I would be carrying?"

"A Galioscian," Zach replied at once.

"Wha-what's that?" Kendall asked, taken a bit off-balance by the rapidity as well as the incoherence of his answer.

"I have no idea," Zach said truthfully.

"Are we going to meet Doctor Who in our dream?" Kendall asked, changing a subject that was weirding her out too much to pursue.

"Do we have a choice?" Zach asked her.

"We could drink tons of coffee," Kendall offered. "But that would only be delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later we'd conk out. And the next thing we'd know, we'd be on board the stupid Tardis."

He was so struck by the hopelessness in her voice that he gathered her up into his arms before realizing that touching her could bring on another flashback. When it didn't, he began to relax slightly, and his concern for her came even more to the fore.

"Why are you shivering, Lovely?" he asked. "Cold?"

"Terrified," she reported. "I'm afraid we're one dream away from losing everything again."

"Not gonna happen," he swore to them both. "I'll protect you and Spike. That's what I'm here for."

"Could Doctor Who be right?" she needed to know. "Are Them still lurking, ready to reoccupy us? Pretending to be the people closest to us?"

"Doctor Who isn't our friend," Zach reminded her. "He's probably only blowing smoke to get on our nerves. For all we know, Them have gone back to wherever they came from. He's the one we have to watch out for."

"I guess we'll find out more tonight when we dream," Kendall yawned. "I hope we wake up again here as us. But whatever happens, Handsome, we'll always find our way back to each other and to Spike, right?"

"Always," he affirmed, kissing her forehead to make it official.

"Then I won't be afraid," she lied.

He didn't want to go to sleep yet. He wasn't ready to take on the Doctor and Them. More than anything, he wanted to get lost in his passion for Kendall. Hell, he wanted to get lost in Kendall. How long had it been since they had made love awake and in their original reality? Weeks? Centuries? Unacceptable and unnatural. He yearned for her. He needed to be with her the way a man dying of thirst needed water. But being with her might make him remember what else happened that night at Madden's Clinic, and he wasn't ready to do that. Would he ever be ready?

The next thing he knew, Kendall was on top of him.

"There's so much I don't understand about this Pine Valley," she said, kissing him passionately on the mouth.

"It all sounds pretty gruesome," Zach agreed when they came up for air. He pushed her away a trifle. "Most of our friends seem to have vanished. And my father has come back to life, which can't be a good thing."

"Did you just push me away?"

"Kendall, I told you. I'm having flashbacks. Touching you seems to bring them on. Ever since Vegas. And this is no time to be remembering what I did to you at Madden's Clinic. When we go to sleep, we may dream ourselves into "The War of the Worlds". I can't fight the whole freakin' galaxy while I'm consumed with guilt."

"Screw the whole freakin' galaxy," she told him, pressing her body so tightly against him, they could barely breathe. "Better yet, screw m--"

"_What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"_

"_What's going on? Where's Doctor Madden? Where are the lights? What the hell are you doing here, Zach?"_

"_I could ask you the same question. What the hell are you doing here, Kendall?"_

"_Zach, I'm here as a Surrogate. You know that. Doctor Madden is going to give me Greenlee's fertilized egg. I'm going to carry Ryan's baby for her. Where IS Doctor Madden? Zach, why do you have that look in your eye? You better get out of here. I mean it, Zach! Zach, stop!" _

"_Is that what you really want, Kendall?"_

"_Shut up."_

"_Answer me. Do you really want me to stop?"_

"_No. What I really want is you."_

"Kendall, I remember something else!"

"Bravo," she said, ripping open his pajama top. "Did we ever have a Porn Movie dream? We really should have had one of those!"

"You may have consented that night at Madden's Clinic!"

She lifted her head from his chest. "Consented to what?"

"To the two of us making love," Zach hoped with all his being. "To the two of us conceiving Spike!"

She backed away and leaned on her elbow. "Zach, I've told you. That didn't happen. I'd have remembered. I didn't see you at the Clinic that night. Didn't we already establish that?"

"Maybe you don't remember for a reason," Zach suggested, pulling her closer and playing with the straps of her deliciously revealing red satin nightgown. "Maybe both of our memories were erased."

"We already know both of our memories were erased," she said impatiently, pulling off the nightgown over her head and flinging it across the room. "Look, Handsome, nothing happened that night between us. Spike is Ryan's child."

"Not according to Spike."

"Oh, because he babbled 'Da-Da' in your direction? He's a baby, learning how to talk. Tomorrow he'll probably call you 'Poo-Poo'."

Zach made a face.

"Alright, not 'Poo-Poo'," she relented. "But you get my drift. Spike is not a reliable eye-witness to the Event! Or Non-Event. You know what I mean."

"Okay," he granted, becoming fascinated with the nape of her neck and all that was below it. "Let's reconstruct the crime. Or Non-Crime. You know what I mean."

"You mean, you wanna strap me down to a table?" she guessed.

"Shut up," he said huskily, pulling her on top of him and then rolling them over.

"Make me," she said huskily, moving beneath him. "Now, Zach! Now!"

Which was when the doorbell rang.

--

_Avon calling? Somebody selling Girl Scout Cookies? Them? Please come back next time when the door opens and our Zenadventure continues!_


	33. Chapter 33

_Chapter Thirty-Three: "Visit from a Friend"_

_Previously – Back from Las Vegas, Zendall began a night of passion, only to have it interrupted by somebody at the door._

--

Standing in the cool night air, Lily rang the doorbell for exactly 42.5 seconds before she gave up and turned to go. Giving up was not like Lily. She considered persistence among her best life skills. But so much had changed in her life these last months, it was little wonder that her persistence had begun to fall to the wayside.

"My marriage fell to the wayside because Jonathan and I weren't alike anymore," she thought, starting back down the path away from Zach and Kendall's condo. "My family fell to the wayside when Barbara came to the town and didn't give my Dad and Erica a chance to get back together again because she wanted him to marry him herself even though they were nothing alike. Pine Valley fell to the wayside because Zach's Dad decided to kill all the women who worked at Fusion just to get back at Zach, which makes no sense at all to me. I think Zach's Dad must be a worse person than Barbara is. But not by much."

She heard the front door open in back of her and Zach's voice come booming out.

"Lily, it's you! Come back!"

She signed and turned. She wasn't certain what to expect from Zach, and she never liked not being certain. When she had begun working for Cambias six months or so ago, she had really enjoyed being Zach's assistant. He had always seemed to understand her. He had even given her a workspace without any red in it. On the surface, everything was fine between them. He allowed her to conduct the investigation to discover who had broken into his office. She had solved that mystery on her very first day as his assistant. The guilty culprit was Hannah, Ethan's Mom. Lily started walking back to the condo. Hannah. Something about Hannah never rang true to Lily. But Hannah wasn't the reason that Zach began to watch her with that icy look in his eyes. That wasn't the way he was looking at her now, she noticed as she passed him on her way into the condo. Now he looked at her the way he used to look at her, warm and friendly and _human_.

Hi, Lily," Kendall greeted her. "Your sense of timing is beyond unique."

"Sometimes I get tired of being unique," Lily responded earnestly. "But there's nothing I can do about it." Sensing an awkward moment, she tried to recall some polite, appropriate conversation she had learned in her Life Skills Class. "How are you feeling, Kendall?"

"Great!" Kendall said, patting her flat tummy. "No morning sickness! No maturity clothes! I'm pregnant, you know."

"Yes, everybody knows," Lily said. "Babe Chandler was planning a baby shower for you, but she decided to leave town forever instead.""

"Does anybody know why I'm not showing?" Kendall had to inquire.

Lily shrugged. "This is Pine Valley. Nobody pregnant shows until their eighth month."

That icy look was absent from Kendall's eyes as well as Zach's. That was good. Lily began to relax.

"Lily, can you tell us everything that's happened in Pine Valley since my Father began murdering people?" Zach requested, knowing that any account Lily would give them would be perfectly accurate. "If it doesn't upset you too much, that is."

"Well," she said sitting down and not looking in the least upset, "your Dad managed to murder Erin and Simone, nearly murder Dani, murder Dixie by mistake with poisoned peanut butter pancakes, attack Zarf in the cemetery, and nearly murder Babe Chandler whom everybody thought he _did_ murder but that was because most people didn't know that Josh hid her in your casino, Zach, until you and Kendall could catch the killer. Which was your Dad. Is this some kind of test to see whether or not I've been paying attention?"

"No, Lily," Kendall hastened to assure her. "This isn't a test. We just need a summary of recent events. You're doing fine."

"I'm extremely good at summarizing," Lily agreed. "Do you want to know how Josh became Adam's new son?"

"Not really," Kendall said. "How have _you_ been doing lately? You seem kind of down."

Kendall couldn't help but think about the Lily she had known in the reality Them had put her in after ripping her out of this one. That Lily had been married to Jonathan and was divinely happy. In that reality, Spike was her baby.

"Are the corners of my mouth pointing down again?" Lily asked. "That happens a lot lately. It's probably because of Barbara and my half-sister Ava."

"Ava!" Zach exclaimed, pretending he knew all about her. "Don't you like her, Lily?"

Lily had given that matter much thought and was ready with an answer.

"I'm pretty sure that Aidan likes her more than I do. I've never had a double before, so I have nothing to compare this experience with. All I know for sure is that Ava is nothing like me."

"Omigod, she's got an Evil Twin!" Kendall gasped. "How cliché is that?"

"It could be worse," Lily said, knowing well the history of Pine Valley. "At least I don't have amnesia."

"I wish I could say that," Zach said ruefully, musing over the disjointed fragments of his memory that had begun to surface. "Lily, Tad left a message on our machine that my Father had escaped. Have you heard anything about that?"

She nodded. "He's still on the loose. My Dad's been trying to reassemble the Task Force to catch him but nearly everybody is working on Krystal's baby's kidnapping."

"Oh that's right," Kendall remembered. "Adam kidnapped Can't Call Her Charlotte Anymore. Babe mentioned that in her message. So much happened while we were gone, Zach!" She stopped, realizing Lily had no way of knowing what she was talking about. "I mean while we were in Las Vegas. That was one vacation we definitely didn't need. I'm glad we're back! Right, Zach?"

"Right," Zach said without much conviction. He went to the window and looked out at the night. "My Father is lurking somewhere out there. Wasn't he still dead in all of the other Pine Valleys we were in?"

"Lily, why don't we take you home?" Kendall suggested before Lily could ask what in the world Zach was talking about. "Jack can't like you being out this late!"

"I have my own place now so my Dad isn't ever sure of when I get home," Lily told them.

"We know that," Kendall covered. "Can we drive you home?"

"I don't see how," Lily said. "I live in the condo right across from you."

Kendall stiffened slightly. "Ryan doesn't live there anymore?"

"No. He and Annie and Emma are back in his Penthouse. They asked me to be Maid of Honor at their Wedding. I think that's because I'm the only virgin they know.""

Kendall would have hugged her, but luckily remembered that this Lily wouldn't have appreciated the gesture.

"Have you spoken to Jonathan lately?" she asked her softly.

A said, far-away look came into Lily's eyes. "We've spoken. We've seen each other around town. But now that he's changed, it's like we never knew one another."

"I'm so sorry, Lily," Zach said, meaning that with all his heart.

Lily stood up. "I don't know why you should be sorry. It isn't your fault. Why haven't either of asked me what I'm doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" Zendall asked.

"I want you two to introduce me to Doctor Who. I need to get into another Pine Valley as soon as possible. One that doesn't have Barbara and Ava in it!"

--

_Hmmm. Lily knows about Doctor Who? Does she know about Them? Is our already thick plot thickening even more? Please return for our next episode!_


	34. Chapter 34

_Chapter Thirty-Four: "Visit from a Fiend"_

_Previously – Lily came to call on Zendall, interrupting their Night of Passion and freaking them out by requesting an introduction to Doctor Who!_

------------------------

Kendall was first to break the stunned silence.

"Lily, you know about Doctor Who? How could you possibly --?"

"I've dreamed about him for years," Lily explained, as if to a child. "In my dreams, we've gone on some amazing intergalactic adventures together! But I never met him when I wasn't asleep, so I'd like you two to introduce me to him."

"Blast his soul!" Zach spat out.

"Lily, did he take advantage of you?" Kendall cried out, wondering if Lily even knew what that meant. "Did he ever hurt you? Scare you? Put his paws on you?"

Alarmed and confused by the urgency in Kendall's voice, Lily shook her head and wasted no time in clearing Doctor Who's name. "Kendall, those were only dreams! At least I thought they were only dreams. But no! Not even once! He's been a perfect gentlemen, always! We have a professional relationship. I've been his Companion, like I'm your Assistant, Zach. But only at night when I was sleeping, not during the day when I was awake."

"You're my Assistant?" a bemused Zach asked. "How's that working out?"

"I'm extremely efficient," Lily reported, not wondering at all why Zach should ask her that.

"Tell us some more about you and the Doctor," Kendall requested, an uneasy feeling overtaking her.

Lily was eager to do just that.

"My experiences with the Doctor were all extremely educational. We went on adventures together to so many different galaxies and dimensions! We solved so many mysteries together! And he never ever touched me because the first time I ever dreamed about him, I told him I didn't like being touched, and he listened. When Jonathan and I became boyfriend and girlfriend, the dreams stopped happening. I guess I didn't need the Doctor then. But I need him now. When he gets here, I'm sure if you both formally introduce me to him, and give me a good reference, he'll change his mind about making me his Companion. Don't you think that's a great plan?"

"HE'S COMING HERE?" Zendall screamed as one.

"That's what he said in his e-mail. He asked me to meet him here, and please don't scream anymore, or I'll have to start counting."

"The door is locked," Zach reminded Kendall. "Who can ring until the cows come home, he's not coming in here."

"Better not," Kendall said resentfully, remembering how she had nearly shot her soulmate in Las Vegas, thanks to the Doctor.

"He sent you an e-mail?" Zach asked Lily, who nodded.

She smiled, her eyes lit with excitement. "That was the first proof I had that the dreams were real. I replied and asked him if we could go away together, but he doesn't want to do that, although I'm hoping he'll change his mind about that after you introduce me to him. He wrote that there's somebody else he wants as his new Companion."

"Three guesses who that is!" Kendall snorted.

"I didn't know exactly what to expect when I came here tonight," Lily went on. "In Doctor Who's e-mail, he wrote me that extraterrestrials had been impersonating you since February Sweeps, and I did detect something not quite right about you two for months and months. But I assumed it was my imagination, a reaction to Simone, Erin and Dixie getting murdered, my break-up with Jonathan, my Dad's divorce, the discovery that I had a half-sister and/or my nerves. I guess it was more than that."

"Lily, Doctor Who betrayed us to those extraterrestrials!" Kendall cried out. "Don't trust him! Never trust him!"

The corners of Lily's mouth turned down. "There must be some mistake. Doctor Who doesn't betray people. Unless it's for their own good."

"Truer words were never spoken, and rarely by one so lovely," a familiar voice intoned.

"Doctor!" Lily exclaimed, as the front door swung open and Doctor Who strolled through it.

"That was locked, right?" Kendall checked with Zach.

"Double-locked, and we're not dreaming," Zach answered her. "Could we be dreaming?"

They quickly pinched each other to verify their waking state.

"None of that in front of Lily," the Doctor said reprovingly.

"This wasn't passion, you twit," Kendall clarified, rubbing her pinched arm. "What's wrong with you?"

"What's right with him ?" Zach asked in turn.

"They're pretty angry with you," Lily interpreted.

"Thank you for meeting me here, Lily" the Doctor said warmly. "I've missed you terribly."

"Thanks, but I've been too busy to miss you," Lily replied matter-of-factly. "I got lost in Manhattan and was married and unmarried to Jonathan Lavery and nearly got attacked by somebody I met on-line, whom I thought was going to be my new boyfriend because we were alike, but he turned out to be a predator and we were nothing alike. Jonathan, and I used to be alike, but he changed and then he lied to me. He didn't mean to change, but he did. He's sorry he lied to me, but he did."

She looked incredibly sad.

"I'm sorry, Lily," the Doctor offered. "You've been through a great deal since last we met, haven't you?"

"I'll say. My Dad and Erica got divorced and his sister-in-law Barbara moved right in on him, so I had to move right out because she kept invading my space, and rearranging the furniture and I didn't like her at all. Then my half-sister, Ava, turned up. Guess what she does for a living! She robs men who think she's a prostitute. I don't think that's the best career choice, and we don't have much in common except that she looks exactly like me, which I find disturbing."

"Again, Lily, I'm sorry," the Doctor told her.

"When are you going to apologize to _us_, you maniac?" Kendall blasted him.

"You're right, Lily, they _are_ pretty angry with me," the Doctor perceived.

"That's only because they don't know the truth," Zarf/Zoe said, swinging open the locked front door and following Doctor Who into the condo.

"Is he wearing mascara?" Kendall whispered to Zach.

"And blush as well," Zarf/Zoe replied sweetly. "Bianca has been helping me coordinate my colors. I'm a Summer."

"Swell," Kendall said.

Lily felt it fell to her to get Zendall up to speed. "Zoe is Bianca's girlfriend. Like I was Jonathan's girlfriend before we got married. Only they can touch each other, and we couldn't because I can't." She turned to Zarf/Zoe. "But I had no idea you knew the Doctor!"

"I'm full of surprises," Zarf/Zoe admitted.

"I'll bet," Kendall said.

"You said we don't know the truth," Zach said to Zarf/Zoe warily. "What truth don't we know?"

Before Zarf/Zoe could answer, Doctor Who took a seat on the couch next to Lily and told all.

"Zach, everything I said to you in Las Vegas, every single evil thing, was said because Them could hear me and read my thoughts, and I wanted Them to continue to think I was on their side. In other words, even though I forced you back into your body when Kendall was aiming a gun right at you, I didn't really want her to kill you."

"So he sent me to get you out of the line of fire," Zarf/Zoe explained, plopping down next to the Doctor and Lily and crossing his/her legs.

Zach's eyes narrowed. "Them can read minds?"

"Only when on a planet," the Doctor replied. "When traveling in space, that talent leaves Them for some reason. I suppose thoughts can't travel in a vacuum. I don't know; I never gave it much thought. Anyway, on the Tardis, we can think anything we want to think, strategize anything we want to strategize, and we're safe from prying minds."

Zendall exchanged glances.

"We're not on the Tardis now," Kendall said for them both. "Aren't Them reading our minds even as you spill the beans?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," the Doctor said candidly.

"Wonderful," Zach commented acidly.

"Doctor, why didn't you wait until we dreamed ourselves on board the Tardis before you told us this?" Kendall had to ask. "As it is, Them now knows everything!"

The Doctor gazed longingly at the woman he loved more than he had ever thought it possible to love. "Kendall, it no longer matters what Them knows."

"What the hell is he talking about?" Zach demanded of Zarf/Zoe.

"I'm afraid we'll find out sooner rather than later," Zarf/Zoe said darkly.

"Something else has been bothering me," Kendall then revealed, sensing a lull in the conversation. "Doctor, you told us that for some reason Them could track me but not Zach. But in Vegas, the Them that I thought was Zach didn't seem to know I wasn't one of Them. He even called me some "Z" name or other."

"Zartz," Zach said, looking troubled.

"So how do you explain it?" Kendall asked.

"He can't explain it!" Zach exploded. "He can't explain anything! Kendall, he's deranged!"

"No, he isn't!" Lily bridled. "But nevertheless, Kendall asked you a good question, Doctor."

"An excellent question," the Doctor affirmed. He beamed at Kendall. "Brilliant as well as flawlessly beautiful."

"Oh, come off it!" Zach yelled so loudly that Lily covered her ears and began counting prime numbers.

"Congratulations," Zarf/Zoe said tartly.

"Lily, forgive me!" Zach begged. "I didn't mean to yell! I won't yell anymore."

"You better not," Kendall said crossly. "It's a miracle you didn't wake up Spike!"

"Lily," Zarf/Zoe promised her. "I will stop time the instant the next person raises their voice."

"And he can do it," Zach told her, glad that she had calmed down enough to stop counting.

"I'm okay," she told Zach, taking a deep breath. "I just wish you two trusted Doctor Who."

"Like that's gonna happen ever again," Kendall cracked. "So answer my freakin' question already, Doctor! Why is it that Them can't track me anymore?"

He complied with no further prodding.

"Them are incapable of tracking their own kind. They stopped being able to track you, Kendall, when you returned to this reality. Because, my dear, in this reality you are pregnant. When Them attempt to track you, your baby gets in the way, so to speak. Them can't track your baby because you see, dearheart, your baby is a Them."

"YOU'RE DEAD!" Zach vowed, forgetting completely his promise to Lily and diving for the Doctor's throat.

"Cease and desist or else I'm stopping time!" Zarf/Zoe threatened calmly.

"Zach, don't!" Kendall implored him. "It makes a kind of crazy sense. After all, we weren't really here when the baby was conceived. Them did that."

"That isn't exactly the point," Doctor Who began uncomfortably.

Kendall looked down at her flatter than flat tummy and sighed. "So Them have won. Whatever happens now, Them have changed our lives forever. Game, set and match."

"You have it all wrong, Kendall," the Doctor told her. "And for the moment, Them are thoroughly and completely beside the point."

"Why?" Zendall and Lily asked as one.

"That's why," Zarf/Zoe sighed, as Alexander Cambias, Sr. shot the locks off the front door with an Uzi submachine gun and bounded into the condo, looking absolutely, murderously ecstatic.

------------------------

_Will the Satin Slayer a/k/a Alexander Cambias, Sr. finish off Zendall before any of their questions can be answered? Did he bring enough poison darts with him for everybody? Should we be scared? Is Doctor Who making it all up as he goes along or is the Zendall Baby really a Them? Please return next week or else how will any of us ever know?_


	35. Chapter 35

_Chapter Thirty-Five – "Confrontation"_

_Previously – Lily, Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe were paying a visit to Zendall when Alexander Cambias, Sr. a/k/a The Stain Slayer showed up!_

------------------------

"Hiya, Pop," Zach said.

He could barely believe that the Father he had thought for years was dead and gone was scowling in front of him, extremely alive and armed to the teeth.

"Zach, I don't like your Dad," Lily told him without being asked. Staring at the Uzi submachine gun that Alex Sr. was gripping, she had begun to rock back and forth, a troubled look on her face. "He murdered my friend Simone and my ex-sister-in-law, Erin. And Dixie, whom I didn't exactly know, but I would have liked to, especially since everybody in Pine Valley says wonderful things about her now that she's dead. I don't think your Dad is a very nice man."

"You got that right, girlie," Alex Sr. sneered.

"Pop doesn't do nice," Zach explained, wondering how in the world he was going to save a roomful of people, one of whom he loved with his all his heart, and one of whom he loved with all his soul, not to mention the baby still asleep in the nursery, whom he had so recently remembered was his son in every sense of the word.

"I've tried so many ways to teach you the error of your ways," Alex Sr. began to lecture. "But you still refuse to learn that lesson, don't you, Alex? Tell, me what am I going to do with you? I'm running out of women to murder! Any suggestions, Kendall?"

"I suggest you should go f--"

"She was sweeter to me in Las Vegas than she's being now," Alex Sr. confided to Doctor Who. "She offered herself to me. Repeatedly. She wanted us to be lovers. Did she happen to mention that to you, Alex?"

"Already I don't like you," Zach sighed. "All these years I thought you were dead and strewn all over Nevada. Now I find out you're still among the breathing. But you've developed some new bad habits, Pop. Killing off my friends, threatening my wife. Is that any way to behave?"

"Why the surprise, Alex?" Alex Sr. responded, appropriately bewildered. "You've known for months that I'm alive. Are you trying to confuse me? Is that the only tactic you have left, the only weapon in your pathetic arsenal?"

"I'm the Doctor," Doctor Who introduced himself, taking it upon himself to make the introduction, since nobody else had thought to do it.

"And I'm Zoe," Zarf/Zoe piped up. "You might remember me from the cemetery several months ago, when you beat me senseless."

Alex Sr.'s eyes glazed over. "Good times," he recalled. "I was on such a roll!" He laughed a chilling laugh and raised the Uzi. "And I will be again! Where's your little boy, Kendall?"

"With his Father," Kendall replied at once, thankful that a plausible lie had come to her lips so easily. "He's with Ryan. They went to the park. Central Park. In Manhattan. New York."

"I've heard of it," Alex Sr. said, leveling the Uzi at Kendall. "You're lying, Mrs. Slater. I can always tell when women lie to me."

"I wish I could tell when people lie to me," Lily spoke up, her rocking slowing as she began to slightly adjust to the frightening situation she was in. "My half-sister, Ava, was supposed to teach me how to tell when I'm being lied to, but all she's done is lie to me herself. I don't think she's been trying to teach me anything by doing that. I think she was just lying because that's what she does."

"Bring me the boy," Alex Sr. commanded. "I know the truth, Alex. I know he's your son. My grandson. I want him. He belongs with me. The Cambias blood flows through his veins. He's mine. Bring him to me. Now."

"Drop dead," Zach urged. "Again. And forever this time."

Alex Sr. took deadly aim at Kendall.

Fleetingly, she wondered how the heck Alex Sr. could know Zach was Spike's bio dad. Did _she_ even know that? Zach had recovered memories of them being together that night in Madden's blacked-out clinic, but she didn't remember a thing, and she was certain she wouldn't have forgotten something that monumental. But Zach seemed so sure.

"Did you plant false memories in my husband's mind?" she took the time to question Doctor Who.

He was the picture of innocence. "I would never do such a thing," he maintained.

"He wouldn't," Lily said supportively. "At least I don't think he would."

"Not his style," Zarf/Zoe yawned, obviously becoming bored with being held at submachinegunpoint by a crazed old guy with an interesting accent. "Not my style either. Sorry, Kendall."

Kendall wasn't sorry. She wanted Spike to belong to Zach. She realized now she had always wanted that. Suddenly she remembered the baby she was carrying, the baby who belonged to nether of them. The child of Them.

"Bring me the boy," Alex Sr. repeated, crashing in on Kendall's musings, his voice even darker and more menacing than it usually was.

"I think this might be a good time for you to do your time-stopping thing," Zach called over to Zarf/Zoe.

"Love to," Zarf/Zoe called back, snapping his fingers.

_Time stopped. _

Alex Sr. was caught mid-slaughter, Uzi at the ready, an insanely gleeful expression on his frozen face as he aimed at Kendall's forehead. As for Kendall, she had been transformed into a beautiful statue, staring angrily at her homicidal father-in-law. Lily was similarly immobilized, a frightened look on her pale face, as she stared straight ahead. Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe appeared to be functioning normally in the time-stop, which was to be expected given their extraterrestrial identifies. More surprisingly perhaps, Zach was similarly as unaffected as he had been in Las Vegas when Zarf/Zoe had stopped time in order to save him from being shot by Kendall.

"For the record, I'm not all that crazy about this Pine Valley," he announced when he was certain that Alex Sr. was no longer a threat. "Original reality or not, it stinks. Good friends of mine have been murdered willy-nilly by my dear old Dad whom I thought was long dead and scattered." He grabbed the Uzi away from Alex Sr. and threw it to Zarf/Zoe. "Also, it appears that my wife and I are having an extraterrestrial baby, a souvenir from the kind folks who occupied our bodies these last months. To top things off, ever since we got here I've been remembering some things that Kendall swears didn't happen, and other things that I know couldn't have happened."

"They did happen," Zarf/Zoe assured him, nonchalantly accepting the deadly weapon. "Spike is your biological son and Zach Slater killed himself in Las Vegas four years ago."

As if on cue, Spike began to cry.

------------------------

_How can Spike be crying? Why isn't he affected by time stopping? How could Zach have killed himself four years ago? Where are Them and what are They planning? Please return for our next amazing installment when some of these questions will begin to be answered! Promise!_


	36. Chapter 36

_Chapter Thirty-Six – "Some Answers"_

_Previously__: The Satin Slayer a/k/a Alex Cambias, Sr. burst into Zendall's condo, taking them, Lily, Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe prisoner, at which point Zarf/Zoe stopped time and Spike, mysteriously unaffected by the time-stop, started crying._

------------------------

A long time passed. A really long time. I mean, an amazingly long, long, LONG time. Actually, since he was outside of time, no time at all had passed. But that wasn't how it felt to Zach Slater. To Zach, it felt like it took forever for him to race to the nursery and pick up Spike, who was whaling like there was no tomorrow.

"Take it easy, little man," he soothed him. "There's no time left for tears." Or probably for anything else, he thought, taking him back into the living room, where no living at all was currently happening. He had to think, he thought. Why couldn't he think? What was it that crazy shemale from outer space had said to him? That Spike was his son? That he had committed suicide in Vegas years ago? That meant the memories that Kendall had theorized were implanted were real. But how could they be real?

"What are you talking about?" Zach demanded, when he had returned from the nursery with a no longer crying Spike. "How could Spike be my son? How could I be dead?" "_And why is Spike cooing in my arms? Why isn't he as frozen as Kendall, Lily and dear old Pop?"_

"I think we should tell him," Zach/Zoe said to Doctor Who, who nodded slowly in agreement. "Sooner or later he's bound to remember anyway. And Zartz, Zift and Zetz must be on their way here. They've got to have picked up our thoughts by now. They're stupid, but they're not deaf."

"We're not stupid," the orange throw-pillow on the sofa piped up.

"And we're certainly not deaf," the red throw-pillow next to it joined in.

"So there!" the purple throw-pillow which was between the other two throw-pillows exclaimed, not knowing what else needed to be said, but wanting to hold up his end of the conversation all the same.

"It's official," Zach murmured to nobody in particular. "I've gone stark raving mad." Absently, he kissed Spike's forehead. "Sorry, little man. I meant to be there for you always. I didn't mean to go nuts." Helplessly, he looked at his still frozen wife, as she confronted his madman of a father whose arms were still raised in fury as if they still held the Uzi. They held nothing, of course. Zach had taken away the Uzi from him the instant time was stopped. "At least I got _that_ done before my mind went."

"It's always about _you_, isn't it?" the orange throw-pillow demanded testily, as if reading Zach's thoughts. Which he was.

Wordlessly, Zach stared at the talking throw-pillows.

"Zach Slater, meet the Galioscians," Doctor Who said. "Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Them. You know what I mean."

Zach was fairly certain that he had no idea what Doctor Who meant. Nor did he care. Crazy or sane, he wanted the answers to his questions.

"Of course you do," the red throw-pillow commiserated. "And you deserve them."

"Nobody deserves them more," the purple throw-pillow elaborated pointlessly. "Well, maybe Kendall does. But at this moment in non-time, she's in no shape to hear them. Or anything else."

Frozen Kendall stared angrily at frozen Alex Sr., as if illustrating the purple throw-pillow's pointless point.

"We chased you through space and time in order to give them to you," the orange throw pillow sniffed.

"To give WHAT to me?" an exasperated Zach demanded.

"The answers," Doctor Who answered. "Think, Zach. You know everything already."

"I do? No, I don't. Do I? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

Zarf/Zoe snapped his fingers and the puzzling memories played themselves out for Zach once again.

_Zach Slater had just thrown Rendall out of his office so they could go to the hospital, find Erica and get the hell out of his life. He felt enormously weary. Or was he bored? He sat down heavily at his desk, opened a drawer and took out the gun he kept there. "For emergencies," he had joked to himself a long time ago. Well, what was this, if not an emergency? _

_He put the gun to his head and smiled. "You win, Father. See you soon, Michael!"_

_He put the gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, his head exploded and time stopped._

_Zach opened what was left of his eyes and tried to make friends with this new body There wasn't much left to make friends with, however._

"_I better clean up this mess," he thought, putting Slater's head back together and wiping away any tell-tale blood that had dripped onto the desk and floor. "There! That's better! Good as new." He felt himself grinning. "Actually, better than new!"_

"That happened?" Zach asked weakly, trying once again to fathom the unfathomable. "How could that have happened? I'm alive. How could I have committed suicide all those years ago cleaned up the mess, and went on as if nothing had happened to me?"

And then he knew. The knowledge flooding through him with a force that nearly knocked him down. Sensing a disaster in the making, Zarf/Zoe took Spike from him just before he tumbled out of Zach's suddenly numb with shock arms.

"I don't come from Earth. I come from another planet. I'm not Zach Slater. I took over what was left of Zach Slater's body and life when he killed himself in Vegas."

"Bingo," exclaimed the orange throw pillow.

"I come from Galios III," Zach heard himself remember.

"Galios IV," the purple throw pillow corrected him. "There are still gaps in your memory, Zach, but you're getting there."

Where was he getting?

"How long have you known?" he asked Doctor Who, trying not to sound as accusatory as he felt.

"From the beginning," the Doctor revealed. "But I had to go through with the charade until it was safe for you two to return to your original reality."

Zach was well and truly bewildered. "It's safe now? How is it safe now?" He looked over at Kendall for emotional support. "No help there," he thought.

"Your Nemesis has been exiled, so I suppose it's safe," Zarf/Zoe supposed.

"I dunno," Doctor Who differed, "she might come back. It wouldn't be the first time."

"Exiled sounds good," Zach said, not knowing exactly which Nemesis they meant.

'She'll return," the orange throw-pillow predicted gloomily.

"_We_ returned," the purple throw-pillow reminded him.

"And we were stuck in a maximum security intergalactic gulag," the red throw-pillow elaborated.

"Don't remind us, Zartz!" the other throw-pillows begged.

"You're lucky we don't hold grudges, Zach," the purple throw pillow said, not sounding much like it wasn't holding one.

"You were responsible for the years we spent in Hell," the orange throw-pillow mused. "Can you blame us for returning the favor once, thanks to you, the opportunity presented itself?"

Zach came to full attention, his mind suddenly in complete focus.

"You three are responsible for what happened to me and Kendall?"

Their silence was all the answer he needed.

"To stay together, you and Kendall needed to skip town until it was safe for you to return, Zach," Doctor Who observed. "But neither of you needed to be given amnesia and stuck in different realities. That was our friends' contribution."

The throw-pillows were bouncing around the couch in malicious glee.

"Why Kendall?" Zach challenged them. "Why take your revenge out on her? She had nothing to do with what happened between us!"

The orange throw pillow shrugged, which was quite an unsettling sight. "Kendall is everything to you. What better why to strike back than to put you two into different worlds? How could we pass up the opportunity to completely devastate you?"

Zach grinned unmerrily. "You three never change, do you?"

"Actually we change constantly," the purple throw pillow took issue. "You wouldn't believe whose bodies we've been inhabiting lately. Besides you two, I mean."

"You mean, after Kendall and I recaptured our bodies?" Zach asked archly. "You've been inhabiting other people? Anybody I used to know?"

"I told you already, Zach," the Doctor reminded him. "Actually, I told your answering machine. Our friends took over the three people closest to you and Kendall. Other than Spike, of course."

"It doesn't matter who they took over," Zach said to himself. "They're throw-pillows now. And throw pillows they shall remain!" As soon as he could figure out how he could manage that, of course.

Meanwhile Spike was squirming in Zarf/Zoe's arms. He didn't like being taken away from his Da-Da, now that Da-Da was being everything Spike had yearned for in a Da-Da. He cast a worried look at his Mommy. Why wasn't she moving? Was she even breathing? Or blinking? And why did the frozen old man look so angry? He wished he could say something to her that would make her move. And he would have, if he could talk. But the months being raised by parents who weren't really who they seemed to be had taken their toll on Spike. They had taken care of him in their fashion. But they tended to his needs without warmth, without caring, _without love_. Little wonder the only word he could say was "Da-Da". And he had only begun saying that when Zendall, the _real_ Zendall had returned.

"So Kendall and I had to leave this Pine Valley because we weren't safe here for some reason," Zach was summarizing as Spike continued to stare with concern at his frozen Mommy. "Who was threatening us? This Nemesis person whom you say has been exiled?"

Doctor Who nodded. "There was a gigantic interdimensional plot to destroy Zendall. You may have noticed in all the other Pine Valleys you visited that Zendall were more at each other's throat than in each other's arms."

Zach had noticed that. So had Kendall.

"Except for that last Pine Valley," he recalled. "The one where we weren't ourselves. I mean, we were each other. You know what I mean."

"That Pine Valley was next on her list," Zarf/Zoe explained. "That Zendall was due to split up before Kendall delivered Spike. Your Nemesis was all Rendall, and everybody knew it."

"But we're still together in this reality," Zach pointed out. "Why didn't she get around to splitting us up here before she was exiled?"

"Because we saved the day," the orange throw-pillow explained not too modestly.

"Were I you, I would refrain from telling him precisely _how_ you saved the day," Doctor Who advised.

"We mated," the red throw-pillow revealed nonetheless. "Well, not all of us, but Zift and I did. It was brilliant. We all knew it was a foregone conclusion that The Idiots in Charge would get rid of your Nemesis in time. The ratings were plummeting. We just need to stall. We needed a reason Zendall had to go on a few months longer. Some kind of new wrinkle in your storyline. We gave it a lot of thought. Knocking up Kendall seemed the best way to go."

At which point Zach dove on top of the red throw-pillow fully determined to beat the stuffing out of it.

"Zach, we did it for you!" the red throw-pillow lied, trying not to giggle as it deftly avoided Zach's grasp by flying off the couch and heading for the ceiling. "It was a completely pure and selfless act!"

"It isn't as if they enjoyed it," the orange throw-pillow reported. "You didn't enjoy it, did you guys?"

"It was disgusting," the purple throw-pillow recalled. "I have no idea why humans engage in such behavior."

"Survival of the species," the red throw-pillow guessed, still concerned about his own chances for survival as he flew willy-nilly around the room, Zach right behind him with dismemberment still very much on his mind and in his heart.

"Look at it this way, Zach," the orange throw-pillow proposed. "It was a win-win-win situation. Zendall got to survive, Spike got to have a little brother or sister and Zift and Zartz got laid."

For his part, Spike had taken a break from struggling away from Zarf/Zoe while watching his Da-Da chasing the red throw-pillow all around the room. His gaze fell on the still blonde girl with the frightened expression on her face. "Why doesn't she move?" he wondered. "And why doesn't Mommy and that angry old man move?"

Sighing, Doctor Who wandered into the kitchen, found a broom and handed it to Zach, who knocked the red throw-pillow to the floor and kept him pinned there.

"We don't know why you should be so upset," the purple throw-pillow said quickly before his confederate could be finished off.

"You're next," Zach said evenly, taking aim at the hapless throw-pillow with his left foot.

"You're back in your own reality," the orange throw-pillow pointed out. "This is your happy ending. Why stomp on Zartz? Is that what Kendall would want you to do?"

"Definitely," Zach knew, looking again at the Love of All His Lives and remembering everything they had been through together.

Spike was looking at her too. Why wasn't Da-Da helping her? He was looking straight at her! Why was he playing with that silly pillow instead of doing something to help her? Why were all those strange people in the room letting her stay frozen? Maybe none of them had noticed! He had to tell them! But how could he when he couldn't talk yet? "Save her, Da-Da!" he thought desperately. "Leave the stupid pillow alone!"

"Listen to the kid," the stupid pillow in question implored Zach.

"Don't you dare read my son's thoughts!" Zach snarled, hating the throw pillows with all that was in him.

"He's still playing with the silly pillow!" Spike thought in despair. Who would save Mommy? Nobody seemed to notice or care except for him, and what could he do? He couldn't even talk! He couldn't even --

"Move, Mommy, move!" he cried out at the top of his lungs. "Move, Mommy, move!"

_Time started._

------------------------

_Time started? Well, that should speed things up a bit. Wonder what happens next! (And WHEN it will happen! Just kidding!!)_


	37. Chapter 37

_Chapter Thirty-Seven – "Some Questions"_

_Previously__: To save Kendall from the homicidal Alexander Cambias, Sr., Zarf/Zoe stopped time. While time stood still, Them (who had taken the form of three throw-pillows), Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe filled Zach in on what had really been going on. Zach learned that Zendall was sent away from their original Pine Valley for their own protection – their Nemesis, whoever that was, wanted to break up every Zendall in each and every timeline. Them, who had a score to settle with Zach, took advantage of Zendall's forced absence to give the Supercouple amnesia and put them in separate realities. Zach also learned for sure what his flashbacks had been implying – (1) Spike is his bio son and (2)he wasn't always Zach Slater. He wasn't always human. In fact, he isn't human. He is an extraterrestrial who took over Zach Slater's body after his (Zach's) suicide. Zach considers (1) a blessing, but (2) anything but. He knows he has to tell Kendall that they have been living a lie. But how can he tell her? One question haunts him: will she continue to love him when she knows the truth?_

--

Zach looked again at frozen Kendall, remembering all they had been through together: good and horrendous, unbelievable and _really_ unbelievable. Spike was looking at her too. "Mommy, move!" he cried out with all his troubled little heart.

_Time started._

Zach didn't hesitate an instant. He lurched at his Father (who wasn't really his Father, he realized joyfully) and threw him to the ground, just as Alexander Cambias, Sr. attempted to fire the Uzi he no longer held at a no longer frozen Kendall.

"What the blazes happened?" he demanded of nobody in particular, staring at his suddenly empty arms.

"Where's the machine gun?" a no longer frozen Lily asked for all the no longer frozen, including a tremendously confused Alexander Cambias, Sr.

"I put it in the garage," Zach answered. "It'll be happier there. So will we."

"How did you get my gun, Alex?" the old man gasped one moment before the man he thought was his son knocked him cold.

"How DID you get his gun?" Kendall echoed, kneeling beside her best beloved, who was busy using his tie to bind up the maniac whom he had so recently thought was his dead Father, but who wasn't dead after all and wasn't his Father after all.

Zach didn't answer her. There was so much he had to tell her. So much he was afraid to tell her. "I'm not human, Lovely," he rehearsed silently. "Surprise!"

"Call the police, Lily," he directed his employee evenly. "Please."

Sensing something was missing, Zach's eyes darted around the room. Three somethings _were _missing. The damned throw-pillows had made their escape when time started again. Back to the poor bastards they were impersonating, he thought. But who? Zach was fully aware that as long as they were on the loose, Kendall, Spike and he were miles from being safe.

"Zach?" Kendall prompted, as Lily took out her cell phone and hit "911", which she had prudently put on Speed-Dial. "Why the scowl? We beat the bad guy, baby! Well, anyway, _you_ beat him. Somehow. You should be happy. The rest of us are happy! I'm happy! We're home in our true Pine Valley with our baby. And our baby to come. Why don't you look happy, Handsome? It's all good!"

"Kendall, we need to talk," Zach began, tying one last knot. "But not here. Let's go someplace qui-"

"Mama!" Spike called to her, effectively ending that discussion, as she jumped up and ran to take him from Zarf/Zoe.

"How did your Daddy get the bad gun away from the bad man?" she cooed, rocking him.

_Your Daddy._

"He is your Daddy in every true sense of the world," Kendall was thinking. "He keeps saying he's your biological daddy, like that matters. Anyway, how could he be?"

As if in answer to her silent question, she began remembering.

_The Clinic had been blacked out but he found Kendall easily enough in Madden's examination room, stretched out on a table, all set to be implanted with Greenlee's fertilized egg, looking annoyed, frightened and incandescently beautiful._

"_What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"_

"_What's going on? Where's Doctor Madden? Where are the lights? What the hell are you doing here, Zach?"_

"_I could ask you the same question. What the hell are you doing here, Kendall?"_

"_Zach, I'm here as a Surrogate. You know that. Doctor Madden is going to give me Greenlee's fertilized egg. I'm going to carry Ryan's baby for her. Where IS Doctor Madden? Zach, why do you have that look in your eye? You better get out of here. I mean it, Zach! Zach, stop!" _

"_Is that what you really want, Kendall?"_

"_Shut up."_

"_Answer me. Do you really want me to stop?"_

"_Yes! Maybe! No! What I really want is YOU. Especially right now. I need something to remember about tonight beyond surgical gloves and petrie dishes."_

"_Sorry, Lovely. You won't remember any of this."_

"_You're not that forgettable, Zach."_

"_You can't remember this. Neither call I. We both must believe the baby is Ryan's. It's safer that way."_

"_The baby will be Ryan's. Ryan's and Greenlee's. After you leave, Doctor Madden can implant the fertilized egg in me. That is, if he can find his way into this room. It's so damn dark! Why did the lights go out, Zach? Not that I'm complaining."_

"_I blacked out the clinic."_

"_You're a man of so many talents."_

"_You have no idea."_

"_I don't expect you to understand why I talked Greenlee into letting Madden do this. I need to keep part of Ryan alive. Don't ask me why."_

"_I need you to have my child. Our child. Don't ask me why."_

"_That's what I want too, Zach!"_

Kendall blinked. Where did that bizarre fantasy come from? She looked down at Spike, who was staring at her straight in the eye. Then she looked down at her still flatter than flat tummy. What had Doctor Who said before Alex, Sr. crashed into the living room? Something about her baby being a Them? How could that --? Oh. She supposed it might be true in a way – after all, she wasn't occupying this body during her tour of Alternate Pine Valleys. Them were obviously making whoopee while the real Slaters were out.

"But you still belong to us," she whispered down to her tiny passenger. "Zach's body and mine came together and made you. I don't care what hooey the Doctor was spouting about Them not being able to track me anymore because I was carrying one of Them. You're as human as we are, Little One!"

"You've got to tell her, Zach," Doctor Who instructed, as if he had a right to issue orders. "She's got every right to know."

Before Kendall could tell him to shut up and mind his own damn business, Zach was leading her out of their Condo and out into the Courtyard.

"Thank you," she thanked him, plopping down beside him on the bench. "But we can't be out here too long. I don't like leaving Spike with that crew."

"Lily's in there," Zach reminded her. "She'll protect our baby."

_Our baby._

"Now that you mention it, I just had a really strange flashback," Kendall murmured, not looking into his eyes, keeping her gaze on the ground for some unfathomable reason.

"I didn't mention anything about a flashback," Zach said, his gaze unwaveringly upon her. "What did you remember, Kendall?"

"Spike is ours," she said softly. The words sounded so odd to her, so incredible. "_Biologically _ours. But how could that be?"

"What did your flashback tell you?"

"What yours told you, I think. You blacked out Madden's Clinic and you found me there before he had the chance to implant Greenlee's fertilized egg. Lord, I sound like a lab experiment!"

"That night you were anything but," he reminisced, folding her into his arms. He had to tell her. But how could he tell her?

"Zach what do you suppose the Doctor meant about the three people closest to us really being Them in disguise? You remember. He left that message on our answering machine. I was about to ask him what the hell he meant by that when your demented Daddy came to call."

"He isn't my --" Zach began, but thought better of it. She loved him now. Completely and irrevocably. But once he told her the truth…

"Kendall, I have no idea who those damn throw-pillows are pretending to be now," he said, not immediately realizing how completely incoherent he sounded to Kendall, who had missed the throw-pillow encounter when time stopped. "I mean, I have no idea who the three Imposters are," he amended his statement, when he noticed she was looking at him as if he had gone completely bananas. "Wait," he thought miserably. "If you think I'm bananas now, Lovely, wait until I explain my true nature to you."

"Zach, darling, what _is_ it?" she was asking him now.

--

Meanwhile, back inside the Condo, Lily was wondering why the police were taking so long to arrive.

"You know Derek," Zarf/Zoe said, reading her mind. "He takes his time. Remember how long it took him to find the Satin Slayer? Even after the fiend tried murdering his own daughter?" He nodded at the unconscious and bound Alex, Sr. "Not that he could keep him on ice for long even after he caught him."

"I hope things will improve now that McT is gone," Doctor Who sighed, referring to Zendall's Nemesis by a portion of her name. "I absolutely loathed the Satin Slayer storyline."

"So did I," Lily readily agreed. "And I wasn't too crazy about that on-line perv cornering me. Thank Goodness Jonathan is such a good killer. Well, he's had lots of experience killing people. But most of that was because of his brain tumor." She stopped talking long enough to blink back a few tears.

"What are you thinking, Lily?" Zarf/Zoe asked her, as if he/she didn't know.

"I'm thinking that I wish Jonathan hadn't gotten smart again. I miss him the way he used to be. We were alike. We fit. You know. Like Kendall and Zach fit because they're so alike."

Doctor Who squeezed Lily's hand, which of course made her scream, which in turn caused Spike to holler like a banshee on her behalf.

"Sorry, Lily. I forgot about the touching thing. Sorry, Spike."

"That's okay," she forgave him quickly. "When I become your Companion and we travel through time together, we're bound to bump into each other every now and then. Maybe I'll get used to it."

He regarded her kindly and didn't have the heart (and he had two) to tell her the Companion position had been filled. Instead he told her something else.

"Lily, Zach and Kendall may not be as alike as you think."

Lily frowned in genuine concern.

"Does that mean they'll break up like Jonathan and I did?" she asked in horror.

"Ah," Zarf/Zoe sighed, "that is the question!"

--

Zach could not put off telling Kendall any longer. So he told her.

"Kendall, I wasn't always Zach Slater."

"I know, darling. But you haven't been Alexander Cambias, Jr. for a long, long time."

"Or ever," he thought. "Before I was Zach Slater I was a being from another world," he heard himself telling the love of all of his lives. "Galios IV, to be exact. Kendall, there's no good way to tell you." He took a deep, deep breath. "I'm a Galioscian." There. He said it. Now she would begin to hate him because now she would begin to fear him.

"I am so freaking sick of Science Fiction!" Kendall replied passionately. "I even hated the Star Trek dream! As for Doctor Whoever, Zach, I want him out of our house faster than I want your Father out! Maybe we can get Derek to schlep them BOTH away!"

"He isn't my father, Lovely," Zach tried again. "I'm an extraterrestrial. I took over Zach Slater's life back in Vegas when he killed himself."

"He killed himself? I mean, you killed yourself?"

"Yes! Right after you and Ryan left to find Erica in the hospital!"

Zach searched Kendall's fabulous face for a shred of understanding, but saw only utter incomprehension.

"Look," he said, trying to break it down for her, "you remember meeting me in Vegas. You remember how you loathed me at first sight. Why do you think that changed when I came to Pine Valley? It's because I was a different man. Entity. You know what I mean. I took over Zach Slater's body and began living his life."

That rang a bell. "The way Them took over our lives all these months?"

"Exactly."

Exactly. Now she would believe him. Now she would begin looking at him as if he were a monster from outer space, which he was pretty certain he was.

"Wh-what are you trying to say?" she was asking haltingly, her beautiful eyes full of questions and anxieties and more questions. And there was only one answer.

"I'm a Them. I'm a bloody Them."

--

Back inside the Condo, Spike had fallen asleep, secure in the knowledge that the two people who mattered most to him were back where they belonged.

"I wonder where Them went," Zarf/Zoe was saying idly thirty seconds before (1) Derek finally arrived to collect a fully conscious (and snarling) Alex, Sr., (2) Kendall ran screaming back into the Condo chased by a distraught Zach and (3) the roof fell in.

"Zartz, Zift and Zetz returned to whomever they are occupying, I suppose," Doctor Who correctly assumed.

"Who's Zartz, Zift and Zetz?" Lily asked astutely.

"Long story," the Doctor told her. "Long, convoluted story."

"You can tell it to me once we're on board the Tardis," Lily said, clinging to her ambition of becoming the Doctor's new Companion. "We'll have time then. All the time in the universe!"

"Three people closest to Zach and Kendall," Zarf/Zoe mused. "Well, Erica, of course. That goes without saying."

"And Myrtle, I suppose," the Doctor supposed.

"Who's Myrtle?" Lily asked.

The Doctor forgot to breathe.

"Well, if we're listing the people closest to Kendall and Zach, I think we should include Ethan," Lily volunteered. "He's Zach's son, after all.

"Ethan is alive in this Pine Valley?" the Doctor gasped.

Zarf/Zoe nodded, not knowing what the Doctor was talking about.

"Uh-on," said the Doctor.

--

_OMG! Ethan alive? No Myrtle? Could Zendall have landed into yet another wrong Pine Valley? Please return for our next thrilling installment in which (1) Derek finally arrives to collect a fully conscious (and snarling) Alex, Sr., (2) Kendall runs screaming back into the Condo chased by a distraught Zach and (3) the roof falls in! _


	38. Chapter 38

_Chapter Thirty-Eight – "All Good Things"_

_Previously__: Thrown into separate realities in which they cannot remember their life together, Zach and Kendall met in dreams and slowly realized that somewhere the other really existed. Zendall found each other and, aided by a Time Traveler, set off on a journey through alternate Pine Valleys, searching for their original reality. At long last they found it. Or maybe not…_

--

"Um, Lily, Ethan is alive and you never heard of a Myrtle Fargate?" the Doctor asked Lily as they watched Derek and several stalwart members of the Pine Valley Police drag a seriously screaming Alex, Sr. out of the Condo and out of their lives.

"Somebody tell me how the Uzi disappeared from my arms!" Alex Sr. was heard to demand.

"Shut up, you maniac," Derek explained.

"Of course Ethan is alive," Lily told the Doctor. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"Zach, I can't listen to any more of this garbage!" Kendall cried out, running into the Condo from the Courtyard.

"Kendall, listen!" a completely distraught Zach nevertheless begged, catching up to her.

"Listen to WHAT?" she demanded hoarsely, really wanting to know. "To more unhinged babble about you not being human? I'm supposed believe you're one of Them? YOU? So what does that make me? The star of 'I Married a Soap Opera Monster from Outer Space'? What does that make our babies?"

Spike hiccupped and Kendall's Tiny Passenger kicked.

"What's Kendall talking about?" Lily inquired of Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe.

"It's a long convoluted story," Zarf/Zoe quoted Doctor Who from a previous chapter. "To sum it up, Zach just came out to her."

Lily nodded, not understanding at all. But then again, neither did Kendall.

"What are you feeling?" Zach asked her hopelessly, afraid to take her in his arms, certain she'd resist his embrace. And if that happened, if that ever happened, how could he go on living? "What are you feeling, Lovely?"

Kendall took a deep breath. Good question. What was she feeling?

"KENDALL, WAKE UP! YOU'RE HAVING A NIGHTMARE!"

That thought, that _conviction_ came to her suddenly and with such force that she found herself leaning against Zach for support.

"I feel like I'm in a nightmare," she rephrased slightly.

And that was _before_ the roof fell in.

--

The roof probably wouldn't have fallen in, at least not literally, had the Tardis (Doctor Who's space ship/time machine) not chanced to be parked directly on top of it. But of course that had not been so much due to chance as to the unsure parking skills of the Doctor's new Companion, who had badly misjudged the structural integrity of the Condo's roof, forgetting completely that the Condo was nothing but a stage set.

"Oops!" came a shaky voice from within the craft, which had crashed through the ceiling and landed in the living room, directly in front of its stunned inhabitants.

"Is anybody hurt?" Zach called out, waving away the plaster and dust that suddenly filled the air around them. "Is Spike okay, Lily?"

"Uh-huh," Spike answered for himself.

"Kendall, are you okay?"

"Yes!" his wife and a voice from within the Tardis said as one. "I'm okay, I think!" The two voices were identical.

"What the hell?" the Kendall closest to Zach, in all respects, gasped.

By this time, the Doctor had made his way through the rubble that was once the Slater's living room to the Tardis, which, predictably enough, had sustained no apparent damage. But was its driver similarly unscathed?

"Kendall!" the Doctor cried out, although nobody could understand why.

The door to the ship slowly opened, and another Kendall emerged.

"I'm okay," she repeated, embracing the Doctor. "Really. I'm just sorry I made such a mess!"

Mrs. Zach Slater blinked a few times, as if that would erase the scene before her. "Like I said. A nightmare."

But Mr. Zach Slater had a different theory. "I think that's the Kendall I met in New York," he said, squinting. "You remember. When I was trying to find a real you in my waking life."

She remembered. But she didn't care.

"The important thing is that I'm only dreaming that you're not human," she told Zach, rapidly refocusing. "What are you anyway? Martian?"

"Galioscian," he answered, overcoming his fear of rejection and taking her into his arms.

"Galioscian," she repeated, pushing him away. "Well, what the hell? None of this is real anyway."

"Kendall, what you talking about?" Zarf/Zoe asked for them all.

"I've told you already. This is a nightmare. I'm probably still aboard the real Tardis or in Las Vegas or in that sanitarium in the Pine Valley where I was married to JR."

"She's in shock," Doctor Who diagnosed. "I apologize. I should have told you two that Kendall, I mean _my_ Kendall, is my new Companion."

_His_ Kendall smiled and blushed when he called her "_my_ Kendall", while Lily sighed deeply.

"Is this true?" Lily asked, blinking back tears. "Doctor, is she your new Companion?"

"Sorry, Lily," the Doctor said, biting his lip. "I didn't mean for you to find out this way. Someday I hope you'll understand."

She understood all right. He hadn't told her something vitally important. In other words, he lied to her.

"Another one bites the dust," she thought sadly. "I gotta get out of this town." Silently, she vowed to send off her application to M.I.T. that very afternoon.

Zach also understood what Doctor Who had done. "You couldn't get my wife, so you went for a reasonable facsimile. That's quite a tribute to you, Lovely."

"I don't mind being a reasonable facsimile," the Reasonable Facsimile said quickly, lest the Doctor think that she did mind, which she didn't. "I was in such a rut, I was grateful to get away! I mean, I had a fabulous job in a fabulous City. But I always wanted something more, you know?"

Kendall Hart Slater had stopped listening several sentences ago.

"I actually planned on redecorating," she said idly, looking around the wreck that used to be her living room. "I'm so happy none of this is really happening."

"I love you," Zach said, trying to get through to her. "Always only you."

"Whatever," she sighed, doing her best to wake up.

"Zach, there's a problem," the Doctor chose that moment to announce.

"Smart as a whip," Zach remarked to Kendall.

"No, not the Tardis crashing through your roof," the Doctor said hurriedly. "The problem is that somehow, and despite almost all appearances to the contrary, we've landed in another wrong Pine Valley."

Now it was Zach's turn to believe he was in a nightmare.

"But how? Everybody we know and love is here! Spike is here! We've been missing for months and impersonated by Them. I confronted Them when time stopped, and Them confessed! It all fits! How can this not be our original reality?"

"There's no Myrtle here," Doctor Who revealed. "Lily mentioned that while you two were out in the courtyard having a heart-to-hart. And there's one other difference I just learned about."

"Spill it," both Kendalls said, neither one much liking overly dramatic buildups.

"Ethan is alive in this Pine Valley," the Doctor told Zach.

Zach did not take that news lightly.

"Then we have to stay here!" he concluded when his heart had begun beating normally. "I won't walk out on my son again!"

"Yadda, yadda, yadda," Guess Which Kendall replied.

"Is Ethan a Galioscian as well?" the other Kendall inquired, having been brought up to speed on Zach's true nature by the Doctor.

"I dunno," Zach realized. "I don't suppose he is. He was conceived years before I took over Zach Slater's life. I guess he's not really my son then."

"I told you, Handsome," the only Kendall who would ever matter to him said. "This is a nightmare!"

"KENDALL, WAKE UP! YOU'RE HAVING A NIGHTMARE!"

There was that thought that was more than a thought again. That voice inside her head, so strangely familiar, so insanely insistent that she almost heard it. Actually, there was no "almost" about it.

"I _did _hear it," she mused. "Twice. Outside my head. I _heard_ a voice telling me that I'm having a nightmare." She looked around the room. Why was she the only one in the room who seemed to have heard it? And whose voice was it?

"KENDALL, WAKE UP! YOU'RE HAVING A NIGHTMARE!"

"Oh," she thought, recognizing the voice.

"Ryan? Ryan, where are you?"

Zach was looking at her as if she had lost her mind. They all were looking at her that way, including her Double from Another Reality.

Something wasn't right. Something was the polar opposite of right. Ryan's voice shouldn't be telling her anything, considering that Ryan was nowhere in sight. She fell into Zach's arms and clung desperately to him.

"I don't care that you're a monster from outer space. I love you, I've always loved you, I'll always love you. Always only you." The words couldn't come fast enough. It was as if she had to tell him before – before what? "Spike!" she cried, reaching for her baby. "Spike, listen to me, baby! Mama loves you! And Mama loves Dada! Nothing can ever keep the three of us apart!" She glanced back at her best beloved whose face showed a concern bordering on panic. "And if something ever happens to me --"

She was lying in bed next to Ryan in their Condo.

"It wasn't a nightmare," she told Ryan, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt. "Whatever it was, it wasn't a nightmare." She took a breath, cleared her throat, and asked the obvious question. "Where the hell am I?

"You're awake," he laughed. "Groggy, but awake."

She began breathing harder, her heart in her throat. "RYAN, WHERE AM I?"

He moved toward her and gathered her up in his arms, aware that she had stiffened perceptively at his touch. "You're home, Kendall," he answered softly. "With me. Home. Where you belong."

She sat bolt upright. "I'm not! I can't be! This isn't happening!"

He held her as she began to cry, her sobs deep and wild.

"You had a dream, Kendall. A bad dream. That's all!"

"No! That wasn't all! That can't be all! There was 'Casablanca' and 'Titanic' and 'West Side Story'! He was Heathcliff and Rhett! He was Cary Grant saving Ingrid Bergman! And I was Ingrid Bergman! How could it all have been nothing but a dream? Ryan, I was Scarlett O'Hara and Snow White!"

Ryan chuckled, kissed her on the nose and turned off the lights.

"Go back to sleep, Kendall. It will all fade away in the morning. You'll see!"

She lay awake staring at the ceiling. It will all fade away in the morning. Gone. Lost. All of it. The one man she was created for and their baby were no more. No more Zach. No more Spike. No more -- She sat bolt upright again.

"Ryan, am I pregnant?" she breathed, remembering the Tiny Passenger she had been carrying in the Pine Valley she just awoke from.

"Not now, Kendall!" Ryan groaned. "We can continue our fight about having children in the morning! I've gotta get some sleep!"

Our fight about having children? "Oh, that's right," she thought dully, as it all came back to her. "The Ryan of this reality doesn't want children, so I can't be pregnant." She was instantly engulfed by a new grief. "My baby! I'll never hold you!" She reminded herself that undoubtedly there were still pregnant Kendalls in other Pine Valleys, including the one she had just awoken from, so her Tiny Passenger would still live. Only not with her.

She frowned. "And if I'm not pregnant, Doctor Who said that Them will be able to track me." She throught that through. "Oh, but even if I were having Ryan's baby, I'd still be in danger! To be safe, I need to be having Zach's baby! Because Zach is really a Them and Thems can't track each other for some reason." For an instant she felt incredibly vulnerable. Them could find her in this reality!

Shivering, she lay back down and pulled the covers over her. Dark thoughts bombarded her like bullets. Them could find her here. And then what? She stifled a cry of terror. What could she do? Wake up Ryan? Beg him to protect her somehow? Hide her? Help her? No. She tried to steady her breathing. No. She couldn't tell Ryan anything about the unimaginable trouble she was in. He already thought she was nuts.

"And he isn't the only one who thinks that," she realized, her terror somehow abating. "Kendall, listen to yourself! Alternate Pine Valleys. Time Travelers. Monsters from Outer Space. Did any of that really happen?"

A feeling of utter and complete loss swept through her then. Her babies. Her Zach. All the realities that seemed more real to her than the one into which she had awoken were no more. Was Ryan right? Had all of it been nothing but a dream?

She couldn't think about that now. She would go crazy if she did. She'd think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow was another –

"How have you been Ryan?" she heard herself whispering so that her mind would stop quoting from 'Gone with the Wind'. "Anything new and exciting in your life?"

"Well, I met a real live Princess," he answered at once. 'Cousin of Dimitri's. Gillean Andrassy. I don't know if you'd like her. I don't know if I like her."

"You like her," Kendall said, remembering the reality in which Ryan and Gillean had been soul-mates. "Anything else?"

"I've been thinking of taking some ballroom dancing lessons," he revealed. "You never know when knowing how to dance could come in handy."

But Kendall was no longer listening to Ryan. Her eyes had been drawn to the window, where in the dim light she could see an incredibly handsome man standing outside, looking in at her. There was an adorable toddler in his arms.

"Good-night, Kendall," Ryan was saying. "Sweet dreams."

"Good-night," Kendall said, her eyes never leaving the two whom she loved better than her own life.

Zach was saying something she couldn't hear but somehow understood.

"Go to sleep, Lovely" he was saying. "We'll meet you in your dreams!"

She smiled at them with all her heart and blew a kiss. Spike was waving as they disappeared.

"See you in our dreams!" Kendall murmured happily. "I wonder what happens next!"

THE END??


End file.
